Stormy Skies
by CarlileLovesAnime
Summary: Hayato and the Tenth's adventures in dating. Shameful amounts of GokuTsuna, and all that entails. How will the boys fare with their own secrets slowly unraveling?
1. Remember when I said we couldn't

**Title: Stormy Skies  
>Author: Carlile (that's me!)<br>Rating: T  
>Series: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!<br>Characters/Pairings: GOKUTSUNA PLZ  
>Genre(s): Romance; Angst, Drama, Family, Friendship, HurtComfort, (some) Poetry, Spiritual, Tragedy  
>Words: 3963<br>Summary: **Hayato and the Tenth's adventures in dating. Shameful amounts of pure, unadulterated 5927, and all that entails - and not much else.  
><strong>Warnings (fic spoiler alert): <strong>5927, spoilers for the canon, 99% _non_-smutty romance, erratic updates due to my hectic schedule and frequent writer's block, my headcanon - slight OOC-ness (hopefully doesn't completely ruin it), fluff, angst, some gore, and eventual character death.  
><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Instead of being responsible and, say, updating my other stories/fulfilling some promises, I decided to indulge in this mess. But quite honestly I just don't care anymore. I wrote this for my own enjoyment, to vent my love for my poor OTP.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>For now and forever, let it be announced, that Carlile doth not own _Katekyo Hitman Reborn!_. So shut up already.  
><strong>Other: <strong>Long intro is long but won't be fully included ever again kthx. ~

**Chapter One: Remember when I said we couldn't be normal classmates? Well, we can't. (Told you so.) **

**I. We both go down together. **

Tsuna had no idea how it had happened, why, when or where, but by the time he realized it, it was too late. His relationship with Gokudera had gone from being intense enemies to mafia peers to awkward friends to

"Um, yeah, please don't freak out but... I love you."

Truthfully he didn't know where to start. He was going through two firsts at this point: 1) he had never liked another boy before, and 2) he had never had someone reciprocate his feelings before. It was overwhelming yet wondrous at the same time.

If things did work out between him and Gokudera, it would be wonderful. If not, then he couldn't picture it - he didn't even care. Because now, whenever he saw Gokudera, his heart skipped a beat, and his head rushed, and he became clumsier, and by God, he was so in love he couldn't _stand_ it.

Thinking back, it was only natural. Only inevitable. After all, he couldn't blame himself for being human and drifting toward temptation. It made him happy - Gokudera made him happy. If there was any one lesson Tsuna had learned in life, it was that he should never hesitate to seize a moment, even if he was in doubt.

So in a quiet room, heated and stuttering and alone with the young man he presumed to be the love of his life, Tsuna gathered up the courage to confess. No push from Reborn. No Dying Will pills. Just Tsuna's heart, open and bleeding in Gokudera's hands. Gokudera was an enigmatic person, even to Tsuna, who was more perceptive than anyone. But whether Gokudera truly did feel the same way for Tsuna or not, he would never dare to make the first move. Tsuna had to break the ice. And he was rightly glad he did - later that day, after Tsuna melted into a puddle of nerves, Gokudera asked him out on a date. It was happening! This had to be the greatest moment thus far in Tsuna's life.

However, a few particular thoughts kept nagging at the back of his mind. Weeks beforehand, upon the realization of his love for his right-hand man, Tsuna held himself up in his room for hours, writhing around in scary scenarios. He knew he would catch hell for feeling this way. What would Reborn do? What would his friends say? What would the school think?

… And how on earth was he going to tell his parents?

All this time, Gokudera had been falling in love with his boss. The life-saving, the fireworks, the Storm Ring battle, the moments of unfettering friendship. It took a long time for it to build up, slowly but surely, into a love so deep that it was only a matter of time before it ended up exploding inside him and forming a fissure that would change him forever.

He had just never realized it.

Or maybe he refused to realize it. Gokudera had certainly entertained the notion before that he may have liked the Tenth _in that way_, but he always shook it off immediately. A right-hand man should not feel that way about his boss! He should be loyal and tough and platonic, not gushy, and certainly not thinking about his boss like that. It was absurd, ridiculous. So he repressed those feelings as best he could, never minding the fact that he blushed madly whenever the Tenth smiled, or fumed in jealousy whenever anyone but he himself got near the Tenth.

In reality, he was scared. Even if he did ever try to break the sacred mafia law and start to embrace his... um... rather different affections for his boss, he was sure that the Tenth would never accept him.

Then the confession happened, sending Gokudera's head reeling. He was shocked that the Tenth had the gall to make the first move. Shocked, and relieved. Nearly all his questions, about himself and his position in his boss' heart, were finally answered, leaving only one:

"A-are you free this Saturday night?" And that was answered, too.

As right-hand man, it was Gokudera's sworn duty to keep the Tenth happy, healthy and safe. If going out with him would make him happy... well, then, the Tenth's wish was Gokudera's command. The fact that Gokudera loved him in return was only a perk. After all, it was simply enough for someone as gracious and gorgeous and _perfect_ as Tsunayoshi Sawada to love someone like Hayato Gokudera, who didn't even love himself.

**II. Sweet beginnings. **

He counted this the 32nd time he had checked his wristwatch in the past fifteen minutes. But for his nervousness he had all this time yet: time to fret and fidget and worry about whether he looked okay and whether he was dreaming. This was Gokudera's consequence of punctuality. He looked into the horizon, where the sun gave a theatrical orange exit that gleamed off his silver jewelry and seemed to light his white shirt ablaze.

Tonight played and replayed in his mind - the before, the during and the after. The Tenth specifically said to wait for him outside Namimori mall, on the bench where they had sat with a group of friends once and that soda exploded on Ryohei because he waved it around too much. Don't overdress, don't bring him any gifts, don't get there too insanely early. The Tenth warned Gokudera against these things, because he knew that if he didn't directly tell him, Gokudera would do it anyway, because that's just who his right-hand man was, and he knew him too well.

Dressing down was harder than dressing up for a person like Gokudera. He stood there and stared at his entire clothes selection for twenty minutes, trying to decide on what he could wear that wouldn't cross the Tenth's strict boundaries. Then on the way to the bench to wait for his date, he passed a flower shop, and fought hard the urge to run in and buy the biggest bouquet of roses available. The chocolate confectionery was tempting, too, but he also avoided it, like a good boy. And he was sure that it was thirty minutes on-the-dot from when the Tenth said he'd arrive that Gokudera sat down on that bench. That didn't qualify as "too insanely early," did it?

Poor Tsuna probably had no idea that these "first date rules" tortured Gokudera more than helped. At least he got to occupy his mind with what he had planned. Although he couldn't help his fantasies: he wanted to give his Tenth the world, one step at a time.

His musings shattered when he saw the Tenth standing in front of him, hands folded courteously over his legs. Gokudera looked up at the lovely young man who stood silhouetted against the sunset.

Shoulders hunched, Tsuna gave his date a small smile, red tickling at his cheeks. "Hi, Gokudera-kun. Have you been waiting long?"

"No," Gokudera's voice broke. It was a lie. Then again, he should have expected the Tenth to show up late.

"Okay," Tsuna said, knowing that it was a lie. "Ready to go, then?"

"Y-yes!" Gokudera stood and gently set his hand on the Tenth's back to get him to follow. They walked down the nearly empty sidewalk side-by-side, their hands precariously close to one another, occasionally knocking knuckles together, which caused for some silent embarrassment.

Tsuna flushed. He didn't know what to say. This wasn't his first date ever, but it was his first date with Gokudera-kun. For once he actually hoped for something odd to happen right before them, just so they could start talking. His heart repeatedly lurched at the inside of his chest. He felt so hot and itchy and weird around that boy. Some feeling welled up at the base of Tsuna's throat like he wanted to puke, so at least he could get something out of his mouth - but that would be a disaster.

They stopped at a busy crosswalk. While pretending to not be thinking, Tsuna slid his right hand closer to Gokudera-kun's left and cautiously touched their palms together. That got an instant reaction from Gokudera. He jumped. Tsuna immediately recoiled his hand, gritting his teeth down. _Idiot!_ Tsuna thought to himself.

"Ah, s-sorry!" Tsuna said, noticing that that was a little louder than he had liked it to be.

Gokudera could feel his blush intensify. "No, Tenth, that's fine! You just - caught me by surprise, that's all." He seemed cautious from his words, but his eyes were pouring themselves all over the Tenth.

Tsuna stood frozen for a second, as though he was still in shock. Gokudera gave a quick sigh and a quivering smile. He took half a step closer to Tsuna. Then he touched their hands together, shakily slipping his fingers in-between Tsuna's and closing them around his knuckles.

In response, although a little slow, Tsuna coiled his fingers up around Gokudera's hand. Gokudera showed a satisfied expression. Tsuna felt so embarrassed - his palms were all sweaty, he was a nervous wreck, undeserving of Gokudera's cool, smooth, dry hand enveloped around his. _Oh, God, we're holding hands. _

Their light turned green, and the couple moved within the crowd to the other side of the street. Hands entwined.

… _This is kind of nice. _Tsuna squeezed. Gokudera squeezed back.

"It's not too far to the restaurant, Gokudera-kun," Tsuna said to make conversation, once he was comfortably situated in his date's hand. "Er, I guess it's okay if I call you Hayato now? O-or Gokudera-kun. Or just Go -"

"Hayato's fine," he said. "Gokudera isn't even my real last name."

Tsuna was taken aback slightly by that. So Hayato had been lying to everyone this whole time about his name? But he couldn't be mad. Hayato was a savvy mafia man, so an alias, especially one native to the place where he currently lived, seemed like a smart thing to use. He decided not to ask about it either. Gokudera was a rather private person, and with a past like the one Reborn had outlined for him a few months ago, that wasn't a surprise. The point was, he could call him Hayato now. That was where they stood.

However it seemed only fitting that Hayato would allow Tsuna to call him such. Right now they were not boss and right-hand man, nor awkward distant classmates in a sterile desk-filled room. This was Hayato. He was touching, holding hands with Hayato, a real human being that, remember, he was in love with. There was nothing there but skin and raw emotion. And he noted with curiosity the particular feeling he got while he was like this.

**III. Fascination. **

_Isn't it fascinating,_

_How perfectly our hands fit together, _

_Like two pieces of a pretty puzzle, _

_Missing from the box? _

**IV. It just got real. **

The restaurant was located on the Namimori Riverwalk, a dark, romantic market lining the part of Namimori River that flowed through the commercial district. They had reservations. They were promptly seated at the edge of the fenced-in porch at the back of the restaurant, overlooking the cool, slow water that alit every few feet with the reflections of lights on the bridge walls.

Tsuna surveyed the area a little bit. He wanted to make sure no one they knew was around. He couldn't see any other teenagers from here. This was a relief - as he wasn't so much embarrassed, but rather... Hayato looked utterly ravishing tonight, and no one else, in Tsuna's mind, was allowed to have sight of him. A mentality that was rather foreign to Tsuna. He had awakened a sort of possessive monster within himself that night. Maybe that was how Hayato had felt all along?

Either way, there was a strong inner calling to just forget all this dinner nonsense, reach right across the table and grab him and nearly squeeze the life out of him and never let go, never. For the sake of the food between them, however, Tsuna tried his best to contain himself.

**V. There are two universal languages: love and math. And I'm terrible at math. **

It was dark, it was deserted; yet Tsuna did not feel afraid at all in the park that night. He held tight to Hayato's hand while they walked across the dark-blanketed hills. The new moon surrendered to the depth of stars surrounding it. They settled under a young tree with small wet leaves.

Hayato saw a map of the heavens in his own head, reflected on the insides of his gray-green eyes. He could find his favorite stars and planets and galaxies and constellations. There was Hydra, Ursa Major, and his own sign of Virgo. Venus. The North Star. Even faint traces of the rest of the Milky Way. If he could, he would teach the Tenth all of them, bring him to every corner of that gorgeous night sky. But right now that was not the thing to do. Somehow he felt like Tsuna already knew everything.

Tsuna brought his knees to his chest and put his arms around his legs. He kept looking at the sky through the thin canopy above him, but his mind was on Hayato completely. _Say something. Say something, please. _

Thank God Hayato sighed dreamily and spoke then. He was speaking what was on his mind - something he wasn't used to. His thoughts were not a thing to share trivially. "This sort of reminds me of the time I spent in the Australian Outback. Out there, the stars look endless."

"You've been to Australia?" Tsuna asked.

Hayato nodded. "I've been to every continent but Antarctica - that one is next on my 'To Conquer' list," he said. It made Tsuna chuckle.

"I didn't know that," he said. "So you've pretty much been everywhere?"

"Yup. All over Europe. Hong Kong, Calcutta, New York, LA, Rio, Perth, Mexico City, Johannesburg. The Sahara Desert, Tierra del Fuego, Siberia, the Altai Mountains. Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head..."

Tsuna's jaw dropped. "Th-that's amazing, Hayato!"

"Really?" Hayato asked, frowning dumbfoundedly.

"Yeah!" Tsuna said, smiling brightly. "I've never left Japan before, so to go to places like that... It must be an amazing experience!"

Hayato sighed in humility. "It was," he said, "And I learned a lot. But it's ironic."

Tsuna cocked his head. "How so?"

"Every place on this planet, every city, every landscape, is under the same sky. It spreads everywhere" his head slowly turned to Tsuna's direction "and touches everything with the same sun, lights everything with the same moon. It cycles and recycles different things so it seems variant, but in the end..." he and the Tenth were now eye-to-eye, setting deep fissures of adoration in each other's hearts, "... it's all the same, one, big, beautiful... sky."

Tsuna almost couldn't stand it. The way Hayato looked at him right then, his pale skin glowing under the starlight, his eyes were so deep - he wanted to just dive in and swim in them, not caring whether he drowned -, the sheer face of _raw, true, earnest love_. Their hands were beside them on the dirt; their fingertips were so close they nearly touched.

"I guess I just... finally realized it..."

_Kiss me. _

Or,

_You're so sweet. _

Or,

_Nice weather tonight, huh? _

Anything. But there were no words meant to be between them. Nothing could do justice.

Hayato blinked a soft smile onto his face. He felt the Tenth's warmth by merely sitting next to him.

**VI. Cottonmouth. **

Like they had been accustomed to for so long, the two of them waited for the right moment for something incredible to happen. There was no kiss, despite the want aching at their lips. Not here, not now.

But after a pressing silence, after they had studied each other's faces long enough to memorize each and every beautiful detail, after what seemed like an eternity - they were slowly leaning in toward one another. Eventually the winds of longing swept them into a passionate embrace. Gokudera wrapped his arms over the Tenth's waist; it made them both tingle all over; in turn Tsuna curled his arms around Hayato's shoulders and fell into him. Tsuna, eyes squeezed shut, buried his face in the crook of Hayato's neck. Hayato pulled him so close he hoped it didn't choke him.

Tsuna's soft breathing danced like angel dust on his skin. As he held him, Hayato felt something he never thought he'd feel again: whole.

The muffled pulsation of Gokudera's heart was the only beat the Tenth could think of now. There may have been layers of skin and bone and clothing between them, yet he swore he could reach right out and grab the thing, and watch it tick erratically in the palm of his hand. Follow the curves of the heart in and out with his fingers. Breathe in the life it represented. It was practically his.

The Tenth soaked Hayato's scent into his nose and committed it to memory. Generic laundry detergent, a light tinge of mint, the sense of fragility in the air in the eye of a storm, and - faintly - cigarettes. This was air in its truest form, the kind Tsuna longed to fill his lungs with.

Seconds - minutes - hours - years - later, they didn't really know or care, they pulled apart enough to be able to look each other straight on again. A mutual smile spread over their faces. Hayato, who always felt the need to smile around the Tenth, actually felt the upward curving of his mouth, and it even reached his eyes for once.

**VII. I wasn't lying when I told myself tonight would be the best night of my life. **

His elbow on the small of the Tenth's back and his pianist's hand knotted in a tangle of brown hair, Hayato looked into the blackness above with hope. The little white lights may have twinkled up there, but all he could see was the Tenth's face.

**VIII. It's funny because it's a train. **

Hayato walked Tsuna home, holding his hand the whole way. They took back streets that saw cars as often as pigs flew. Many windows had boards over them, and it seemed every other street light was burnt out. Tsuna knew this part of town well, since he clearly remembered chases through these old roads, trying to escape bullies - although now he took his sweet time. He didn't want this night to end. It was nearly 10 o'clock, but that was no matter. He led Hayato through the longest of the long routes.

His mom always told him to stay out of this part of Namimori, but Namimori was a big place, and there was only so much curiosity Tsuna could handle, even if he had a scaredy-cat nature. He stopped them both in the middle of a lane and pointed to a building with gray bricks and a half-dead neon sign that insisted on staying lit. "That used to be a music shop. One of my first memories is of going in there with my mom, before this area of town turned bad, and her buying a flute."

"I didn't know Maman played the flute," Hayato said.

"She does," Tsuna said. "Not so much anymore, but yeah."

When the two of them started walking again, Hayato took one last glance back at the building. "What happened to it? The shop, I mean."

"Oh, that? The owner died. Then his successor decided that he didn't want to run the shop anymore, so instead of selling it he simply boarded it up and abandoned it. It was one of the first businesses to leave."

For some reason, at that particular spot in the neighborhood, Tsuna had felt the need to say something.

**IX. Lies! **

Old black-and-white movies were Nana's favorite. She always thought they had a certain charm to them. When Tsuna came in through the front door, she and Bianchi were on the couch in the living room, and _Casanova _was on. Bianchi was lying on her side and drifting in and out of sleep. Nana had already been swept up in the romance of the movie.

"How was the late-night chess club meeting, Tsu-kun?" she yelled to him over the TV volume.

He paused. He was halfway up the stairs. "Uh, fine, Mom." He continued the mad dash to his room.

Nana just grinned and said mostly to herself, "It's so good that Tsu-kun is finally involved in something for school."

Tsuna was careful to shut the door calmly so as to not seem suspicious. He hadn't even been out of Hayato's company for a minute and he already craved his touch, his scent, his voice, his eyes again. He skulked to the window, wondering if he could still see Hayato walking down the road, or maybe still out in the yard. The contrast in lighting made only his reflection appear in the glass.

"Have a nice date, No-Good Tsuna?" came a voice.

Tsuna practically jumped out of his skin. He whipped around to see Reborn sitting on his bed with a green chessboard in front of him and a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

"Jeez, Reborn," Tsuna said, gripping his chest. "I thought you'd be asleep by now."

"I figured I'd wait for you," Reborn replied, tipping a rook with the end of his pudgy index finger.

Tsuna awkwardly made his way a few more feet into the room. "_That's not weird at all_."

"Want me to test your chess skills? I'm sure after tonight's meeting, you're getting pretty good. Then again, it was only your first." Something in Reborn's voice gave Tsuna a sneaking suspicion of double-meaning.

Sweat began pouring down Tsuna's face. "Uh, um, ah... M-maybe not tonight. I am k-kinda tired, now, a-after all..."

Reborn did his trademark little "I knew it" grin. Reborn stuck his hand under the chessboard; Leon morphed back into his lizard form and crawled up his master's arm to his shoulder. Leon's creepy, yellow, unblinking eyes stared at Tsuna accusingly.

"You were on a date with Gokudera, weren't you?" Reborn said.

Tsuna inhaled sharply. He grit his teeth for a second before he answered. "H-how did you know?"

"Silly No-Good Tsuna," Reborn said. "You can't keep anything from me. You might as well not even try." He winked at him, jumped down off of Tsuna's bed, crossed Tsuna's room, and mounted his hammock. "On second thought, do try. It'll be more fun for me when I figure it out."

**X. In you I trust. **

His hands cooled around the metal key. He adjusted the hood of his jacket as he inserted the key into the deadbolt on his apartment door. Once he himself was inside, Mel, with her wide marble eyes, raced to him and grazed his leg. Her tail was in the air.

Hayato picked her up and dug his fingers into her neck. She began to purr. He was used to being in the dark here. He wondered how long Mel had been around. She was an interesting cat that had wandered in and out of Hayato's life for years. When she got restless in his arms, he let her leap down to the floor.

_I'm sorry_, he thought in her direction. _I just feel like I still need to hold someone. _

Hayato shuffled across the concrete floor to where he knew the futon was. He crashed onto the cushion, grabbed the nearest throw pillow, and held it tight, pretending it was his precious Tenth, until he fell asleep.


	2. It's only as awkward

If there are any errors please tell me. And a big thanks to those who reviewed/faved/alerted/just plain read all the way through. You are awesome (:

**Chapter Two: It's only as awkward as you make it. **

**XI. I celebrate privately. **

It was April 18: a warm front had come that morning, and though summer was forever away, the kids at school were already getting antsy. The grammar teacher was talking at the front of the room about an essay his students would have to write tomorrow. His crisp handwriting had covered the entire board in yellow chalk.

But Tsuna wasn't paying attention to that. He kept dreamily glancing over at Hayato, who had been absent from school the past two days and was now lulling into sleep at his desk near the teacher. With every look Tsuna would make a few more marks on his notebook paper. One long black line trailed too far; he casually erased part of it with the nearly-gone pink bump at the end of his pencil. He set his left elbow on the desk surface and rested his head on his hand. Tsuna had never been a very artistic person, but for some reason he felt inspired to draw Hayato. Three times. When he finished this sketch, he flipped through the previous pages to look at his creations. They weren't bad.

Their first date was four days ago. Hayato hadn't spoken to him since, and that worried Tsuna greatly. His mind had wandered to the worst of possibilities. _What if he really doesn't feel the same way about me that I feel about him? _or _Did I say or do something that turned him off? _or _Maybe that was all just a dream and I'm actually insane... _

He bit down on the metal at the end of the pencil, and the moment he took another good look at the back of Hayato's head, the bell also rang for lunch hour. The teacher raced out of the room amongst the herd of students, leaving Tsuna to slowly gather his bearings, alone in the now empty classroom with his old friend, now turned something-or-other of a possibly — no, probably romantic nature, Hayato Gokudera. (Truthfully Tsuna didn't know _what _to call him anymore.)

Hayato leaned forward, lowered his palms onto his desk surface, and rose to his feet. Tsuna kept his head down and nose buried in his backpack as Hayato approached him.

"Tenth," Hayato said softly.

Tsuna looked up at him with intense mixed emotions of anxiety and adoration. His grip slackened on the backpack zipper.

Hayato hunched a little closer and eased his hands into his pockets. His gray-green eyes were reserved but sincere. The silver crucifix around his neck gleamed under the fluorescent lights. "...You want to get out of here?"

**XII. Going with the flow means only that you'll get trampled. **

That morning, Gokudera kept playing with a thick strand of hair that had had the misfortune of falling in front of his face. In his head, a hot debate ensued. He left it hanging over one eye. Then he slicked it back in with the rest of his bangs. Over, aside. Over, aside.

His eyebrows furrowed. He bent over and ran his hands erratically through his silver hair. When he stood back up and looked into the wood-framed mirror over the sink, he couldn't help but snicker at how ridiculous he looked, at not only his messy hair but the stress in his face. Whistling a tune that had spontaneously popped into his head, he began to smooth out the sides. The light gray sky didn't take away from the mostly natural light of the bathroom, and through the crack in the door he watched the transition of quirky Wednesday morning cartoons.

He had finally decided to ask the Tenth on another date. He had to get serious. The Tenth looked so absolutely _gorgeous_ last time, as he always did. Gokudera felt he didn't even compare, that he almost felt ashamed at it, and if this was going to go on he had to at least try to appear as though he deserved that boy.

**XIII. Cue the _Mission: Impossible_ theme song. **

They hurried across the grounds of the school. Tsuna was on sharp lookout for any Skylarks; Hayato was huddled close to Tsuna, his hand laying protectively on the small of Tsuna's back, both their backpacks held tight to his open shoulder. The bags swung in the same direction and knocked together at the more abrupt steps. No one noticed the two boys who owned them.

**XIV. On the streets, you follow your instincts. **

Once they were far enough away from the school to seem inconspicuous, Hayato consciously slowed their pace. He grabbed for the Tenth's hand. This instantly pleased Tsuna, but he still noted the impatient tenseness in Hayato's grip. The two of them ducked into a diner on the corner of a rather common block of town. Inside, a jaunty jazz tune crackled over the jukebox and two waitresses in socks absentmindedly mopped the green-and-white tile floor. For the most part there weren't many customers at that moment — only a middle-aged couple in a window booth and a mother speaking strictly to her two messy toddler sons.

Tsuna instantly saw the _MEN'S ROOM_ sign they were headed for. It was tidier in there than would be expected of this sort of place. Hayato set their bags down on the counter and opened the largest compartment of his own.

"We should ditch the ties and stuff," Hayato said after a quick scan of the empty stalls. "Seem less suspicious that way."

Tsuna complied, pulling his sweater-vest off, then loosening his necktie. He watched Hayato whip off his jacket, fold it haphazardly and shove it deep into the open pouch of his backpack, which was black and half falling apart, and had a unique array of pins and buttons from jazz clubs, biker gangs and cigar bars decorating the front.

"Why did you want to leave?" Tsuna asked.

Hayato shrugged and took the vest and tie from Tsuna's hands. Hayato folded those (a little neater) and put them inside Tsuna's backpack, which was plain and boyish. "Why'd _you _want to leave?" he asked back. He yanked his snakelike navy tie out from under his shirt collar.

"I asked you first," Tsuna said.

Hayato glanced at the mirror on the wall before meeting the Tenth's eyes again. "I just... Needed to get us out of that place." He paused to find the ceiling and bashfully look up to it. "I want to spend the day with you. Really bad. And you looked just so miserable sitting there." His lips quirked. "Sorry I didn't ask you about it before."

Tsuna smiled. "It's okay," he said. "I certainly don't mind. In fact I was actually hoping for something to happen." Tsuna ground the toe of his shoe against the tile.

Hayato's eyebrows rose and his eyes brightened as he lowered his head to look at the Tenth once more. For a moment he felt almost as though he had kidnapped the poor other boy or something. "Really?"

Tsuna gritted his teeth together under his smile. Nodding, he said, "Yeah. I mean... I was a little nervous that... You know... Maybe you didn't..." He rubbed the back of his neck while peering off to the side, "...likemeorsomething."

At that, Hayato could practically feel his heart stop. A cold surge shot straight through him from his fingertips. He developed a twisted, hurt expression — his lips fell ajar, his eyebrows knitted, pain cascaded from his eyes — and when Tsuna saw it, he got a sinking feeling. Like he had kicked a sick puppy.

"Tenth," Hayato breathed, in disbelief. The harsh bathroom light on his pale skin and white dress shirt washed all the color out of him, further reflecting the shock onto his appearance. A reassuring smirk crawled across his lips. He shook his head once, his eyes drifting towards his feet. He exhaled. He locked eyes with the Tenth again.

"Tenth, I — I love you. Really, I do. I'm completely crazy about you. I'm so sorry if I gave you the wrong impression but I... I really, really do love you, Tenth."

A bleary smile tugged at the corners of Tsuna's mouth.

"The other night made me so happy. I had the time of my life with you," Hayato said. "I just..." He gazed into Tsuna's eyes. At that moment, in the unflattering environment of the diner restroom, Tsuna's eyes, he swore, looked as beautiful and warm and ardent as they had under that starry Saturday night sky. That took Hayato's breath away, stopped Hayato mid-sentence. They had just the hold on him to do that. Hayato had never been under that kind of human power; somehow it filled him with a feeling he couldn't identify, but knew deep down that he liked.

Ever since he had stumbled into his life, the Tenth had been the center of Gokudera's universe. Tsuna, he determined, was all he ever needed, and he so desperately wanted that boy to notice him, to accept him. To love him. It hurt him to see those big, beautiful brown eyes looking at someone else; to hear that magical innocent laugh in response to someone else; to feel cold and unknown at the sight of those delicate hands touching someone else. For years that jealousy had consumed him. The pain of rejection was frequent and fresh in Hayato, and over time he had grown numb to it. But back in the days when all he could do was stare longingly at his boss and wonder what this feeling was, the envy, the isolation he experienced was stronger and tasted more bitter than any other he had known before.

Hayato would take time to realize it, but...

Those eyes were his to keep now. Those eyes and the voice and the hands that came with them — they were finally, finally his.

Curling his shoulders inward, Tsuna let go of a breath he did not know he took. "Just what?" he asked. It was obvious, in his voice, that he was swept up Hayato's — suddenly blank stare.

Hayato hadn't responded after a moment. Trying to keep himself from getting too panicked, Tsuna reached forward and snapped his fingers directly in front of Hayato's face.

"H-Hayato?"

He jolted, swallowing hard and blinking his green eyes repeatedly. "Oh, Tenth. I'm sorry. D-did I just blank out there for a minute?"

Tsuna nodded shyly, for now repressing the implications and fears in his head.

Hayato remembered the extra clothes in his backpack. He unfurled a different zipper and didn't search long to reach what he was looking for: a pair of jeans and a simple gray tee.

"Uh, here." He awkwardly handed them to the Tenth. "I hope they're your size. Please, um, —" he lunged at the handicapped stall in the corner and propped the door open "— change in here, Tenth."

Tsuna examined the new clothes in his hands, then stepped into the stall. But not without first casting a worried glance at the madly blushing Hayato before uttering a small "Thanks" and shutting and locking the stall door behind him.

**XV. A jolt in the coloring. **

He forced his breathing to steady in the other stall. Shutting his eyes, he righted the hood of his baggy black jacket. The small, expectant pain in his throat was all too familiar. Quietly he drove his brain into the utmost consciousness. Hayato examined the markings on the inside of the stall door. When he saw something particularly profane, he hoped the Tenth wasn't subjected to that filth.

At the front of his mind — damn, he let himself slip again. He thought that perhaps punching himself in the head would fix the broken circuit that had caused him trouble since birth, but that would probably just knock him out instead, so he didn't. Hayato held his conscience in his fists. He felt so small, suddenly, in the clothes that fit him so well. It may have been better to let them swallow him up. Everything would turn to pain in the end. That was the only truth he knew.

He had heard no stirring in the stall beside his; the Tenth must not have come out yet. Hayato thought about the boy in there. Though he tried not to picture the Tenth in those hungry clothes — when a snap of that fearful image delved into his mind he could almost hear the Tenth screaming, and he shuddered.

Hayato never considered himself a religious person. But in that cramped public bathroom stall, trapped by demons, surrounded by filth and graffiti and corruption, with that constant faint buzzing in his head, he clasped his heavy hands together and prayed. He was instantly ashamed that he had been in doubt for so long and then couldn't even form a coherent plea to God, that the cross he wore around his neck burned his skin. All he could hope as he drew his white knuckles to his forehead was that he could perform his solemn duty to the very letter.

The handicap stall door clicked and footsteps echoed out, which Hayato noticed yet at which he was not startled. He ended the prayer in a jumble of mental words from different languages, checked his appearance one last time, and opened the door to the translucent blue of the high skylight over the sinks.

**XVI. "You." **

_You can't feel me, no,  
>Like I feel you,<br>I can't steal you, no,  
>Like you stole me. <em>

_And I want you in my life.  
>And I need you in my life. <em>

- "You", The Pretty Reckless.

**XVII. Something hot on the side. **

Her name was Kasumi Makami; she had a flowery pink tattoo trailing up her leg, and she smacked her fruit-flavored gum like no one else was around.

And as usual, her heart rejoiced at the sight of a certain teenage boy with long gray hair and a thick Italian accent.

She curled her fingers around the edge of the small table, eyes scanning every centimeter of her customer's face. "Gokudera-kun! Great to see you!"

He folded his hands in his lap. "How's everything, Makami-san?" he asked.

"Normal. _Boring_." Whenever Gokudera-kun came into the diner, it always seemed to be her shift, coincidentally. She served him every time. He was a mysterious boy, but mature, and very strikingly good-looking. He was smart enough to help her, a struggling college student, with any assignments she didn't understand. Moving her gum from one side of her mouth to the other, she cast a look at the meek brunet taking the other seat. "Who's this?" she asked, grinning.

"Ts-Tsuna Sawada," the brunet said. Then, without really thinking about it: "We're dating," pointing between himself and Gokudera-kun.

Hayato kept a straight, pleasant face, but inside he was taken slightly by surprise. _The Tenth... just said... _

"Y... yeah," Hayato said. A smile threatened his face. He let out a silent, shaky exhale. "We're dating," he echoed, and he decided that he liked the sound of those words coming from both their voices.

Kasumi gasped. "Aw! That's so cute!" Bending one of her long legs, she took two menus out of her back pocket and set them in front of Gokudera-kun and his date. "You know what? Just for that I'll give you boys whatever you want today, on the house," she said.

"Thanks," Tsuna said. He gave her that sweet smile — you know, the one that made Hayato blush and his poor heart skip a beat.

0o.o0o.o0

Before she walked away, Kasumi pinched Gokudera-kun's shoulder teasingly and winked at the two of them. Aiko, her coworker, a 33-year-old single mother, stood behind the bar counter near the back of the diner.

"Hey Maka," Aiko said in a jokingly flirtatious tone, "Your _boyfriend's _here. 'Course you already know."

Kasumi tugged lightly on Aiko's shirt sleeve. "He's gay," she whispered rather frantically.

Aiko rose her eyebrows like she couldn't believe it. "Seriously?"

"Uh-huh." Kasumi nodded. "See that brown-haired kid with him? They're dating."

"Damn!" Aiko said. "Why are all the good ones homo these days?"

Kasumi frowned in agreement. "I know, right?"

"It's weird, though. I never picked up any gay vibes from him."

Kasumi elbowed her friend. "Well, maybe you should get your gaydar repaired," she laughed.

0o.o0o.o0

Hayato didn't see himself as homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, nonsexual or anything. In his mind there was only the Tenth. (Tenthsexual?) Others took it a little differently, though, when he laid his elbows on the laminate green surface, his head in his palms, his eyes dreamily on the boy across the table.

"So," he said carefully, "We're dating."

_American-style, hm — _Tsuna lowered the menu from his face. "W-well, we are, a-aren't we?" he asked. "I mean... I don't know. You said you still — you love me, and we're at a diner together right now, so I kind of figured. Uh. Y-yeah. If that's all — if that's okay with you, um..."

"Of course it is, Tenth." He reached out and set his fingers on the Tenth's smooth, effeminate knuckles and gingerly stroked the back of the Tenth's hand as it sat still on the tabletop. Fuzzy warmth spread through Tsuna's entire hand, arm, body. He smiled.

Hayato really liked this diner. In his opinion it had the best coffee in town — he always ordered it straight-up black and drank it slowly and smoothly as though it would cleanse him. In fact it upset him that so few people knew about this place. And he considered Makami as somewhat of a friend. She was intelligent, polite, an efficient server: to sum it up, tolerable. Aside from these things, the atmosphere reminded him of a place where he used to dine back when he had lived in New York City for four months; he appreciated most of the music selection in the jukebox and the tastes of the choosers thereof; above all the diner was a convenient place to grab a drink on the way to school in the mornings.

With the Tenth looking so cute and acting so lovable and being so _his_ in front of him, though, nothing else seemed to matter. Especially when next he lifted the Tenth's hand across the table and softly kissed his fingers.

**XVIII. Chain-link fence. **

After a brutal practice in steamy weather like that, Yamamoto deemed the shower that followed to be rightly rewarding. The water was lukewarm at best but he soaked it up in a rag and wrung it out over his head. The locker room was nearly empty when he left.

"Later, Yamamoto," one teammate said to him with a high-five, as Yamamoto sauntered out the door with a gym bag slung around his shoulder.

He came to the gate just as Gokudera and Tsuna approached it from the other side. They stopped. Tsuna waved at him and grinned, shouting, "Hey!" He couldn't help but notice that they were out of uniform. Then again, so was he.

Yamamoto let himself through the gate. Once he caught up with his friends they started walking in the same direction away from the campus. "Where'd you guys go today? I missed you during lunch!" he said.

"Out," Gokudera answered curtly. He kept in stride a few inches closer to Tsuna than usual.

"Sorry about that. We can hang out at my house though," Tsuna said.

**XIX. Open. **

Tsuna felt hot at his place at the table — and not in a good way. Yamamoto was going over what he didn't get on the math homework, which Tsuna didn't receive because he didn't even think about school after he left during lunch hour with his new boyfriend. Hayato was helping Yamamoto work the problems more calmly and patiently than normal.

He took an anticipatory breath and let it out at the next lull in the conversation.

"Yamamoto?" Tsuna said. The baseball-er lifted his gaze. Hayato was only slightly alarmed. He gulped once. He didn't actually think this moment would be real. Yamamoto's empty eyes looked curiously at Tsuna.

"We have something to tell you..." Tsuna had a determined laser-gaze coming from his big brown eyes. Yamamoto quickly gauged the seriousness of the situation.

An excruciating pause.

Tsuna's mouth quirked, and he suddenly felt an intense heat bearing down on him from just looking so intently at his friend. "Gokudera-kun and I, um... Well, we want you to know how important of a friend you are to us, and... Um... — "

"We're going out!" Hayato blurted, and he smacked his hand over his mouth, realizing what he just said. On the outside he looked remorseful, nervous, but on the inside he was grinning like an idiot. It was such a big cheesy mental grin that it could have easily beat any of Yamamoto's dopey expressions.

Tsuna sank in his spot. He smiled sheepishly at Yamamoto who was glancing back and forth between his two best friends with some sort of unreadable expression on his face. _So much for putting it gently,_ Tsuna thought. _But I did do the same thing to Hayato back at that diner. _He built on it hoping that all this information wouldn't overwhelm Yamamoto, trying to phrase it in a way that made it less uncomfortable for all three of them.

"_Hayato_ and I went on a date this past Saturday, and we talked for a while today too, and... It looks like we're. You know. Together. Now." Honestly he was shaking. "A-and we're sorry."

Hayato turned his head over to the Tenth and furrowed his brow slightly. _What was there to be sorry for? _Then he thought for a moment on Yamamoto's position and he understood.

But to the couple's utmost surprise (even though it was only to be expected from the guy), Yamamoto just started laughing. They both looked puzzled at him.

"I knew there was something," Yamamoto said. "I could feel it."

Gokudera removed the tightly cupped hand from in front of his mouth. "Huh?"

"You... You're not mad?" Tsuna asked with an increasing sound of enthusiasm in his voice.

Takeshi Yamamoto only laughed a little more, a little harder. "No, I'm not mad! I'm actually happy for you guys."

Hayato and the Tenth exchanged cautious, satisfied smiles.

"I always thought there was something deeper between the two of you. I just felt too weird to call you out on it — and now it's true so I was right! But I never said anything, so I guess that doesn't count..." Yamamoto curled his finger over his lips in thought, but then realized he was rambling and continued on the topic at hand. "A-anyway, it's fine with me that you guys are dating. I don't mind. It's not like my friendship with either of you will change because of it."

Gokudera rested his elbows on the table and laid his head in his arms, a pleased glint in his eyes.

"So you don't think it's going to be... you know," Tsuna ventured, "...Awkward?"

At that Yamamoto let forth a hearty chuckle. He slung his arms around his two friends' shoulders and pulled them close to him, a swift motion that certainly startled them both.

"Hey," Yamamoto said, "It's only as awkward as you make it."

**XX. As easy as breathing. **

He determined quickly that he loved the heat, the closeness, the feeling of his lover's shallow breath on his skin. The quiet rustle of clothing on bedsheets. The fluid, heartfelt whispers and wordless promises of a life pretty and complete. Of course the feeling was mutual. He found himself petting Hayato's fine silver hair, each touch new, like a cloud, with a brightness in his face as though it was the most divine thrill of his life. And Hayato's hand light on his waist. Cautious. Protective. His cold fingertips had never known such a substance.

Tsuna couldn't see or hear anything but him; he could feel him, he could smell him, he was so close he could almost taste him. (All he could help was to wonder what that would be like.) They weren't sure how long they had been lying there, how long after Yamamoto left it took for them to get this way, nor how long this would last. For now, however, they simply drowned themselves in the rhythm of their inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, matching the rising and falling of each other's chests. That white laugh, that sound that wavered out of the mouth unfinished and unsure but full enough to echo forever in Hayato's ears, was what he had wanted all along.

It almost brought tears to Tsuna's eyes — here and now and for the first time and nowhere else but in the mind behind those brooding green eyes — he was loved.

Hayato sifted over the sprawling of his silver hair on the pillow, brushed the Tenth's bangs out of the way, and pressed a tender kiss to his forehead. Tsuna, trembling at the pleasure of it, held Hayato's head in place. Fingers digging down to the warmth of the nape of his neck. Hayato kept his lips dormant against Tsuna's skin, smiling into it, until he felt compelled to claim it again with another kiss. For an instant Tsuna knotted the hairs in his fist, then unclenched them. Tsuna's eyelids fluttered shut.

His murmuring tickled the skin and the mind: "You are so beautiful, Tenth."

He opened his eyes. "Wh... What?" His voice was higher-pitched and girlier than he had wanted it to be. He felt a strange lurch from the inside of his chest.

Hayato grazed his head downward. The tips of their eyelashes touched and intermeshed, exposing in full the sets of eyes beneath them. One was omniscient, hungry, warm, naïve, boundless, with an inextinguishable flame of hope in its centers. The other, wavering, raw, caved by dark circles, deep with emotion, grown old from the things it had seen.

"You're beautiful," Hayato said simply. Eyes like mossy rocks casting ripples into Tsuna's brown oceans.

A nearly-painfully deep smile spread across Tsuna's childlike face.

"You think I'm...?" he breathed.

Hayato blinked. "Of course." He gave the Tenth a smile back, one that was earnest, assuring. He swiped his thumb across the corner of Tsuna's face to clear away the strands there. His eyes were even clearer now. "Of course I do, Tenth."

Tsuna let out a quick breath, a hybrid of a sigh, a chuckle and a choke. He got that same moving-chest feeling again.

"You think I'm beautiful."

Some measure of confidence waned away in Hayato at that. _Was that, just now... The wrong thing for me to say? _He noticed the wet look forming in those eyes in which he was lost. For fear of getting rained upon, he rechecked with reality. God, the last thing he wanted was to upset that boy. Panic took hold of him, and he shot upright, keeping the balance of his sitting position with one downward-facing palm, staring wide-eyed and worriedly at his boyfriend. "T-Tenth! Are you okay?" he asked.

Tsuna just choked into tears. He sat up weakly, Hayato there to support him. The sobs had merged after a moment with some sort of strange laugh. He looked up at Hayato's guilt-ridden face from under newly lit eyes and wet-glistening lashes.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I know it's a stupid thing to cry over."

"I'm the one who offended you! I should be the one to apologize!" Hayato said. He shook his head furiously, eyes squeezed shut.

"No, no," Tsuna said. "It's a good thing." To quell the confused tilt of Hayato's expression, Tsuna laid his hand on top of Hayato's. "It's just that... No one's ever said that to me before." Their fingers wove together. Flawlessly.

Hayato looked down at those hands, a deeply smitten expression permeating his features. The Tenth's hand was notably smaller than his. "In my opinion, then," he said, "That's very long overdue." He placed his free hand on the back of the Tenth's head, pulled him closer and slightly downward, and kissed him a third time on the forehead, just as fervently and warmly as he had before. Tsuna buried his head in Hayato's chest and flung his arms around his torso. Hayato returned the embrace, hand stroking up and down Tsuna's back. They could almost feel their spirits coming together as one.


	3. Why is Gokudera so pale?

**Reasons why I haven't updated this story in freaking forever: final exams, Christmas, my grandparents visiting, my birthday, an online course, both my cats died within a week of one another, my bedroom is currently stripped of all flooring, and I'm a little sick. I apologize for my lateness, but really, it's excusable, right? … Please say right. )': **

**Warning: Gratuitous use of **_italics_** ahead. Don't be afraid. Also, long chapter is long. **

**Chapter Three: ****Why is Gokudera so pale? Because it's dark in Tsuna's closet!**

**XXI. Retracing of footsteps. **

_The steam had curled through the small hole in the side of the lid, further up, maneuvering the maze of spikes on the band around Hayato's right wrist. His fingers coming apart, he reached for the coffee cup and drank. _

"_If – " Tsuna started, but he stopped there. Waited until Gokudera lowered the cup from his lips, a heavy exhale stirring the smoke, and looked at him politely. _

_He folded his hands again. "Yes?" _

"_If we _are _dating," Tsuna said, "I think we should talk a little." _

_Hayato didn't move at all. "What do you have in mind, Tenth?" he asked. His eyes seemed so strikingly green against the diner's vivid color scheme. _

"_W-well, I don't mean to restrict you right away..." Tsuna said, shrugging insecurely. _

"_I'll do whatever you say!" Hayato said. He quickly realized he said that a little too quickly and loudly and eagerly. _

_Tsuna just chuckled. "That's the Hayato I know," he said. _

**XXII. Only a mother could love. **

Tsuna calculated each and every step he took down the staircase that next morning. He would lower his foot onto the carpet, pause, rethink his entire plan of action, and then move the next foot to start the process all over again.

When he reached the kitchen, he found the usual suspects. Lambo and I-Pin were shoveling spoonfuls of sugary cereal into their mouths. Futa munched away at a slice of toast with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top. Reborn sipped on his espresso at the head of the table like he deserved to be there. And Nana had just set plates at her and Bianchi's seats when she noticed her son entering the room.

She grinned at him. "Good morning, Tsu-kun! You sure are earlier than usual," she said. "I didn't even have to call you down."

"A-actually, Mom, I wanted to... talk to you about something," Tsuna said. He grazed the ball of his foot along the tile floor. If he wanted to, right now, he could just take off running. Never look back. But that wouldn't be fair, now, would it?

The kitchen became quiet. Conversations, crunching, scraping, ceased. Reborn didn't acknowledge Tsuna at all, but even without seeing his tutor's piercing black eyes, Tsuna felt, at the moment, as though the entire world was watching his every move. An incredible weight bore down on him.

"What is it?" Nana asked in her painfully pleasant voice.

A sphere of heat solidified in his chest and rose slowly up his neck, singeing everything in its path, making him feel like vomiting the words out rather than speaking. His muscles became stiff. He tried desperately to recall those words he came up with on the staircase, but alas, all traces of eloquence had completely escaped him. It seemed he had no choice. _Man, this was so reminiscent of how he felt when he confessed to Hayato the first time. _

"Uhm..." His eyes sheepishly drifted to the floor – but no, he needed to see who he was addressing. He found Nana's patient brown eyes and realized how very similar he and his mother looked. Subconsciously he also surveyed the other eyes in the room that were pointed in his direction. He took a deep breath, and hoped that they would all understand.

"This is awkward," he sighed out, "But... I'm just – going to say it...:" He hardened himself.

"Mom...

"I'm gay."

At that moment, such a tremor of shock sliced through his audience that a casual observer would think Tsuna had grown a second pair of arms right before their eyes. Tsuna took in every little detail of his family's faces. He felt suddenly, completely and utterly, awful. He sank in his place in the doorway. Reborn, who had learned this information beforehand, just smirked a little wider in that cocky way of his.

"Oh, Tsu-kun..." Nana said, tilting her head and shaking it slightly.

Lambo pulled on Futa's shirt sleeve. "What's that mean?" Lambo whispered rather ungracefully. Futa knew the answer, but he only shrugged and picked up his slice of toast again anyway.

Crushed by the disappointment he perceived in his mother's face, Tsuna was compelled to start spouting out more. "I – I wanted to tell you earlier but, I was afraid of how you'd react, and. Um. P-please don't be mad. I'm sorry. I just... I've been feeling a little _different_ for a while now. And, you know, I might not even be sure, but I think that just might be how it is because – well, because... I like this... _guy_, and... Oh, God, Mom, please don't be mad."

"Mad?" Nana said. "Tsu-kun, I'm not mad."

_Wait._ "Y-you're not?" Tsuna felt the pulsation of his heart flow throughout his body.

"No," Nana said, shaking her head. "No, Tsuna, I am not mad. Why would you think I'd be mad?"

"Because I kind of kept it a secret from you. That and, I always thought you were like other mothers and... you know, wanted _grandchildren_." He broke eye contact with her, staring instead at the oven beside him. He crossed his arms over his chest passively.

Nana began to walk toward him. "Well, I don't like it when you keep secrets from me, you're right about that. But at least you had the courage to come out and tell me eventually." She stopped at her son's side and placed her hand on his opposite arm, rubbing up and down comfortingly. He dared to look her in the face. "And you're right, too, that most mothers want grandchildren. In a perfect world I might have grandchildren. But that doesn't really matter, Tsu-kun. What does matter is your happiness. If you think you're gay, that's fine with me. If you want to be with another boy, then I'm okay with it – that is your decision to make, not mine."

"You're okay with it? Really?" Tsuna said.

Smiling gently, Nana squeezed her son's shoulder as she replied, "Tsunayoshi, as long as whomever you end up with makes you happy, and loves you, and treats you right, then I could not care less whether it's a man or a woman."

She pulled him into a tight, loving hug, which he returned with equal emotion, and grinning into his mother's shoulder, Tsuna breathed a wholehearted "Thank you."

Before letting go, she gave him one last big squeeze. "Want me to make you something?" she asked.

"S-sure, please," Tsuna said.

Nana moved about the kitchen. "Er, just out of curiosity," she said, "Tsu-kun. You said you like a boy already. Who is it? Do I know him?"

Tsuna felt less hesitation now that his innermost feelings were laid open on the kitchen table for everyone to eat. "Yeah, you know him, Mom. It's, um. Gokudera-kun."

Without much of a display, Bianchi, her face having darkened, pushed her chair out noiselessly from under the table and left the room like a breeze.

Nana thought on it for a minute. "Gokudera-kun, eh? I guess I can't object to that. He's a nice boy."

"Would you mind if I got together with him?" Tsuna asked. He seated himself at Bianchi's empty spot.

"I don't think I would," she said. "He's a good friend of yours and he's certainly polite to me. He seems like the type that suits you, I suppose. Plus, ever since I met him I've had this feeling that he might feel a little different about you, too."

"Stupidera is _weird_," Lambo said, and I-Pin followed up in something Chinese. Lambo splashed the bottom of his spoon onto the surface of the milk in his bowl.

Tsuna turned his head to the side and looked at little Lambo. _You say he's weird, I say he's wonderful. _He saw the peace at which everything had resumed. His family now knew about and accepted this secret of his. He was content with that for now. Maybe he would figure out how to break it to his mom that the chess club meeting was really his first date, and that yesterday he had skipped school and he and Hayato didn't exactly "study" alone together up in his room. But not now. Not while she was cooking his breakfast.

**XXIII. Morning people. **

Hayato waited for him in the early-morning shadows cast by the house. Tsuna padded right out the front door. When they saw each other smiling in the newborn sunrise, they crashed into a warm hug.

They both had morning cleaning duty obligations, and even though Hayato always blew off the job and Tsuna usually tried to get a friend to fill in for him, for once the two boys found it as a perfect opportunity to spend some time together. This was way too early an hour for anyone to disturb them. Besides, the only other student in their class assigned to cleaning duty that Friday morning, a tall girl with purple feathers in her hair, had made it public that she wasn't coming in to do it.

Shifting both their bags to Gokudera's outer shoulder, they joined hands and began walking down the road.

There was a particular stillness in the early-morning air that Tsuna liked to smoothly bring in and out of his lungs. It made him feel fresh, almost good about himself. And having his boyfriend's hand around his gave him an additional sense of security and a warmth he felt from the inside out. In no possible way – in Tsuna's mind, at least – could a day that started out as perfectly as this turn out badly.

A car cruised past them in the other lane, and Hayato felt charitable enough as to wave to it. When Tsuna looked at him questioningly afterwards, he simply smiled; Tsuna smiled too, but he started laughing. Then, sighing out of the laugh, he purposely walked into Hayato's left side and for a second laid his head on Hayato's shoulder. "I love you," Tsuna said, with the same strength that had been there all those times before. In response, Hayato bent a few centimeters down and firmly kissed the boy's cheek. Tsuna grinned even wider.

After a while the two boys had turned almost all the corners to get out of the residential area. When who should they have seen, from the back, but a lone Haru Miura.

She kept her eyes set high as she walked. Her large pink headphones crushed the sides of her bangs. The socks bunching around her ankles were a size too big. Her hand danced absentmindedly with a stick at her side. Haru was blissfully unaware of her two close male friends walking half the street away, but as soon as they recognized her, their hands flew apart.

"Should – we tell her?" Hayato whispered.

Tsuna didn't even think for a minute before shaking his head. "Not yet," he replied.

If they had one friend who would take this badly, Tsuna knew it would be Haru. She had been in love with Tsuna for so long. Seeing him taken like this would just break her heart. Tsuna didn't know when exactly he would muster up the courage to tell her about him and Hayato. But he did know he had to do it gently. Haru was a good friend. He didn't want to let her go just because the two of them as a couple wasn't possible anymore.

He told himself, as he walked side-by-side with his boyfriend, that he would just hang low and keep quiet, waiting to see in which direction Haru would turn at the end of the street. After that he and Hayato would simply go the opposite way – pretty much any route would take them to school in the end – and they could continue their peaceful walk alone.

Of course, however, his plan was ruined when Haru stopped in the middle of the street, punched the air angrily, and turned around. Her legs were frozen in the beginning stance of a sprint.

"Tsuna-san! Gokudera-san!" she yelled, a large grin on her face.

_Crap,_ Hayato thought. His contented expression changed to a bitter scowl in an instant. He wanted to slow the pace, but Tsuna kept going.

"Hi, Haru," Tsuna said.

The three of them stood in a triangle, facing each other, only about a meter apart. "Why are you guys out so early?" she asked.

"Cleaning duty," Tsuna groaned exaggeratedly. Gokudera glanced at him.

"Really? That sucks. I'm going in early for gymnastics practice – I have a meet this weekend so I have to work really hard!" Haru replied. She looked around. "Where's Reborn? He's usually with you, isn't he?"

At that, Reborn suddenly lept onto Tsuna's shoulder from out of nowhere. "Ciaossu, Haru."

Tsuna bit his lip. He wondered how long Reborn had been following them, or how long he had been waiting around, or maybe this was further proof of Hayato's theory that Reborn could teleport.

She leaned forward and pinched Reborn's cheek. "Hi, Reborn-san!" she said. "You're looking well."

"I've been rather busy lately," he replied, and he left it at that. Tsuna immediately got nervous. _What did he just say and what is that supposed to mean...? _

Haru giggled. "You're looking very good too, Tsuna-san." She blushed and smiled shyly. "As always."

Behind his own back, Hayato clenched his hand so hard that he thought his fingernails would break skin.

"Th... thank you," Tsuna replied. He looked over at Hayato and noticed the vein popping in his forehead.

Smiling pleasantly and obliviously, Haru stomped one foot, then the other on the pavement. "Well, it was nice talking to you boys. I'll text you later or something, but right now I have to go back home. I just realized I forgot my leotard. How stupid is that, right?" She skipped past them, back in the direction they had both come from. "Bye, Tsuna-san! Bye, Gokudera-san! Have fun cleaning!"

"Oh, we will," Gokudera-san said, trying none-too-hard to hide his sarcasm.

They watched her until she had turned the corner and was out of sight. As soon as she was gone, Reborn, a frown on his face, jumped into the air and kicked Tsuna in the head, sending him flying back against the curb.

"T-Tenth!" Gokudera rushed toward him. "Are you all right?" He helped the Tenth to his feet, dusting the dirt off his pants.

Tsuna rubbed his jaw sorely. "What the heck, Reborn?" he whined.

"You thought you could get rid of me," Reborn said. "I'm always there, Tsuna, whether you bother to notice or not."

He tipped his fedora, a self-satisfied smirk on his face, and returned to the sidewalk, disappearing behind the thick trunk of a tree.

While steadying himself, Tsuna took a moment to contemplate what Reborn had meant by that statement – he knew his tutor too well to take anything he said as it was and not think there was some sort of double-meaning to every word. Then he looked Hayato in the eyes. He could see that the guy was still fuming. Tsuna smiled sweetly at him.

"You know, you don't have to be jealous," he said. "It's not like she's going to steal me away from you or anything. I love you, not her. She's just a friend."

"I know," Gokudera said. "It's just... Old habits die hard."

Tsuna blinked knowingly. It was true: for pretty much as long as they had known each other, Hayato had always been ragingly jealous of almost anyone else in Tsuna's life. The Tenth was his and his alone – _why couldn't these idiots understand that? _Really, he behaved that way because he was afraid that Tsuna would abandon him for someone better. That was the last thing he needed, and he knew that. But it didn't have to be this way anymore. Tsuna guessed it hadn't really gotten through to Hayato yet that he didn't have to worry about Tsuna ceasing to love him.

"I figured," he whispered. His eyes were smoldering under that brightening sun. Caught in the track set between their close faces, they slowly came together, eyes sliding shut ever-so-subtly. Oh, my God, it was happening. Was it happening? Was this really the moment they were going to –

Suddenly, the loud rumble of a motor. "Yoo-hooooooo~! Gokudera-kun~!"

_Nope_.

Just as Hayato turned around to see who was yelling, P. Shitt rolled up to the two boys. The front wheel of her motorcycle would have crushed their feet had they not bolted out of the way at the last second.

P. turned the bike off, anchored her feet on the ground and lifted the helmet off her head. "Good morning, darling," she purred, blinking at one of the boys through rainbow contacts.

"Hi, _Shitopi-chan_," Gokudera said. He shuddered in disgust at the suffix _-chan _escaping his lips. She either didn't notice or didn't mind.

A few months ago Shitopi seemed to be an incurable freak. But now she had significantly modified her wardrobe (from beyond-Gaga to just quirky), grown her hair out to a normal length (she had a pixie-cut dyed dark red at the moment, though she hoped to get it down to her shoulders sometime), and stopped caking 50 kilograms of makeup onto her face (that included stopping the collagen injections for her lips.) She was a very pretty girl. With her seemingly new-found sensibility, she had lately become the object of affection of many boys in their class. Her behavior, however, had barely changed.

She skipped to Hayato, stopping only a centimeter away, and got right in his face. He was taken aback slightly, but that only made her come closer. She inspected his every feature thoroughly. When she was satisfied with what she saw, she smiled sweetly. "You're still as cute as always." _As if his appearance would drastically change within any given 24-hour period of time. _

Tsuna's breath caught. "Erm... okay," Hayato said.

She stood straight up on her tiptoes. Then she spun and pittered back to her motorcycle, jumping several meters into the air to mount it with unnecessary flamboyance. "Just wanted to see how my precious, adorable, curious little Gokudera-kun was doing," she said. She flashed another sensitive smile at him. Then she whipped her head around and winked at Tsuna. "How are ya, doll?"

"G-good," Tsuna uttered, waving an awkward hello to her.

She fired up her motorcycle, shoved the helmet back over her head, and popped a sharp wheelie before peeling down the street. Leaving the two boys bewildered in her dust. When it cleared, Tsuna and Gokudera-kun eyed each other.

Hayato shrugged. "She still likes me, I guess."

But Tsuna felt furious. He was a raging fire, overcome with stinging heat inside and out. _She did not say that to him. No way. She did not smile at him like that. _His muscles tightened to an excruciating degree. _He is _mine_, P. Don't you dare even think of pulling that crap. In front of me, uh-uh. _

Hayato straightened his posture. "T-Tenth? Are you okay?"

He stomped over to Hayato's left side and swiped up his hand. "Let's just go," he muttered.

Even in the broadening daylight, Namimori Middle still harbored shadows. They were shadows that followed the boys through the gate, along the fence, down the halls, up the stairs. The couple could feel the uneasiness through the supposed shield of conversation, until a very familiar, low voice snuck up behind them.

"PDA is against the school rules."

Hayato and Tsuna jumped simultaneously. The bitter glare of Hibari's eyes was enough to pry their hands apart.

"Sorry, Hibari-san," Tsuna said. He took a step backward. "We didn't mean to break any rules. Honest. We were only holding hands."

"You shouldn't be crowding," Hibari said.

"I-I know," Tsuna replied, trembling.

"Then why were you?" Hibari asked.

Hayato furrowed his eyebrows. "What do you care, Hibari?" he growled.

Tsuna remained totally still, though on the inside he was shaking his head furiously. _Don't aggravate him, don't escalate the situation, please, or we'll both get beaten up. _

"This is my school, herbivore," Hibari said, his voice raising slightly. "Break the rules and I will bite you to death."

"We're not really doing anything wrong, and it's before school hours, so whatever we do is out of your jurisdiction."

_Please, Hayato, just shut up, right now, and we can go on... _

Hibari sized them up. "A gay couple, made of still-herbivores?" The whistle of metal burned the boys' ears as Hibari whipped out his tonfas. "Quite honestly, I could not care less..."

Needless to say, Hayato and Tsuna didn't get their cleaning duty, or anything else, done.

**XXIV. The third date's the charm. **

He loved how the dark theater heightened all his senses. The buttered, steaming popcorn on the seat to his left already half-empty; the special effects projected colors all over the glossed faces of the audience; the music score and quick voices of the actors were nearly deafening; the air felt cold but alive.

Sure, it was an average movie experience – but Tsuna more appreciated the subtleties. Hayato's protective arm around him, cushioning the back of his head, and hand loosely over his forearm. Tsuna had melted into his side. The armrest between them had even been lifted out of the way. His boyfriend's nearly impossibly quiet breathing easily overtook the sounds of lasers and crashes and explosions. Tsuna paid no attention to his snacks while he could take in the heavenly scent of Hayato's jacket, that electric smell that filled and enchanted his lungs. With the flashes of light for definition, as Tsuna looked up, he caught glimpses of the boy's soft profile and the melty green color of his eyes.

Tsuna got to choose the activity for their third date. He picked a movie about an alien invasion, not his favorite subject but he heard it wasn't bad and figured Hayato would enjoy it – which, he did, very much. Honestly Tsuna didn't care about what they did together. As long as they _were _together. And even though at the moment he seemed entranced by the slimy green creatures pouring out of the spaceships, it seemed Hayato felt that way as well. This movie cost millions of dollars to make. Their love, however, was free, and was more of a wonder than anything that had or ever would appear on the silver screen.

**XXV. Playing with fire. **

Tsuna came home, and he felt like nothing mattered anymore, like he himself didn't matter anymore. In this house where he was called to do every little chore, tormented by small children with no manners, and barred from any minute of peace or solitude – he felt like going insane. His only refuge was the few minutes between when he "went to bed" and "went to sleep."

He shut the door with both hands and his eyes panned across his room when he switched on the light. No cow brat or Chinese girl; no prying mother; not even any fedora-wearing babies. For a moment, he thought, he could relax. He moved to his bed and sat on it like dead-weight and unfastened his belt and cast off the shirt that felt like it was nearly suffocating him. It had been a long day.

He fell backward so that his feet only dangled over the side of the bed. Searching for something in the ceiling, but not knowing what, he breathed conscientiously in, out, once, twice, thrice.

Took in one last, glorious breath, to his fullest capacity.

Closed his eyes.

Let the air out, little by little, over forever, feeling himself deflating, his heart-rate falling.

The room seemed dark when he opened his eyes finally. He felt nothing except the little hot breath in the hand he did not know he raised over his face.

He twirled his numb hand a few times, streaking orange across the darkness. And he watched it, entranced. Every move. He saw himself and the world from every angle in that little beating heart. This beautiful light had come from inside him. He stared at it with questions as to how such a thing could be produced from someone so ordinary like himself.

_Fire. _

He lowered his arm while slowly sitting up. The flame had concentrated to the fingertips he brought together. He flexed the embers apart and together, apart and together, fascinated by his control over them.

This power was his high. With it he felt inhuman, invincible. Pitch black everywhere and he was the only light. Was he noticed now?

He held his fingers just centimeters from his lips – and blew, and in instant he was Tsuna again, in his room, alone, an unnatural ecstasy running up his spine. His head spinning. His blood cold. His bare back against the bed covers. Sweat his melted soul coating his skin. Quietly gasping like a fish out of water.

**XXVI. One more pill. **

Again Gokudera clenched his hand around the pills, squeezed them, and swallowed them down with one swig of metallic water.

_Pharmaceutical wonders are at work _

_but I believe only in this moment _

_of well-being. Unholy ghost, _

_you are certain to come again._

Once they cleared his throat, he gasped. He held the breath, then let his entire body tremble during the exhale. Gokudera closed his eyes. He didn't realize how sore all his muscles were until he tried to relax them.

_Coarse, mean, you'll put your feet _

_on the coffee table, lean back,_

_and turn me into someone who can't _

_take the trouble to speak; someone _

_who can't sleep, or who does nothing _

_but sleep; can't read, or call _

_for an appointment for help._

He shuffled over to the end table a few feet away, picked up the largest picture frame on it – the one that he dared let adorn a photograph of the Tenth – and stared into that photograph. Even in the eternal stillness of it, the Tenth's eyes still engulfed all that came in their path. He kissed the photo. To remember. To forget. He set the frame down.

_There is nothing I can do _

_against your coming. _

_When I awake, I am still with thee. _

Out the door he went, bundled needlessly in a thick blue coat. He was rubbing furiously at his temple with the ball of his hand when he felt the urge to cough into his fist. The drops of blood that had spattered against his fingers disappeared when he slid his hand into his pocket.

_What hurt me so terribly _

_all my life until this moment? _

_How I love the small, swiftly _

_beating heart of the bird _

_singing in the great maples; _

_its bright, unequivocal eye. _

(_Italics _from Jane Kenyon's poem "Having It Out With Melancholy")

**XXVII. "Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire." - Arnold H. Glasow. **

His breath and heart racing, Tsuna gradually straightened his arm at the candle with a stare intense enough to melt the thing. He blinked, once, twice, hard at it, and grit his teeth. His hand was starting to become stiff so he let it down. Nothing.

"If you keep doing it half-heartedly like that, you'll never learn," Reborn said.

"I know," Tsuna sighed. "I know."

Reborn, grimacing, dismounted the pile of rocks upon which he had been sitting. He adjusted the candle slightly so that it stood squarely in the center of its platform. Then he looked at Tsuna. "It's a difficult technique, but I thought even at that you would grasp it at least a little from the start," Reborn said. Tsuna sat exasperatedly on the ground, throwing his mittens off his hands, and Reborn sat beside him.

"I know that," Tsuna said.

"What will I have to say for myself if you walk away from this having learned nothing?" Reborn said.

"I know, I know, _I know!_" Tsuna groaned, slapping the ground. "I just can't do it."

Reborn shook his head. He thought for a moment on what to do next, dipping the brim of his fedora and tightening his lips.

"Tsuna," he said, "I never pegged you for a quitter. When you were learning to perfect the X-Burner, did you ever say those words, 'I just can't do it?'"

"I don't know, maybe," Tsuna said. "I don't remember everything I said. I just remember what I did, mostly."

"No. You never said 'can't.'" He looked up at Tsuna, piercing him through the skull with his pitch-black eyes. Tsuna glanced at him, but then looked back away. The teen leaned back for a minute, then leaned forward, bending his legs and wrapping his arms around his knees.

"You seem distracted," Reborn noted.

"Mm." It wasn't much of a response.

"What's up?" Reborn asked.

"What are you, now, a therapist?" He looked to his side and, lo and behold, Reborn had transformed, sporting a pair of glasses and holding a clipboard in his hands. Tsuna had gotten so used to Reborn's antics by now that his instant change of clothes didn't surprise him in the slightest.

Reborn just smiled at him. But Tsuna crossed his arms over his chest, straightening his legs slightly, and turned away. "Like I would tell you," Tsuna grumbled.

"No-Good Tsuna, you know I'll find out whatever is bothering you sooner or later," Reborn said.

Tsuna sighed angrily, resigning himself to his fate. He waited a minute or two for his breathing could steady before he started talking. "Well – "

"Lie down," Reborn commanded. Tsuna gave Reborn a begrudging glance, but complied, his messy brown hair intertwining with the blades of grass.

"_Well_," he started again, "I guess there's a lot going on that's on my mind."

"Start from the beginning, then," Reborn said, tapping his pen on the clipboard.

Tsuna frowned. "I was born on the fourteenth of Octo–"

"Why must you be difficult?" Reborn said. "Come on, you know that's not the 'beginning' I meant."

Tsuna sighed quietly, deflating. "It's just... You know. Yamamoto knows. Mom, Futa and Bianchi know. Lambo and I-Pin know. Hibari-san knows."

"You're worried about one of us spilling the beans," Reborn said, scribbling on his clipboard.

"No, not really," Tsuna said. "I trust Yamamoto, Futa and Bianchi to keep secrets. Hibari-san I'm not so sure, but I know that he hates even being around other people, let alone gossiping, so he doesn't worry me all too much. You're a bit of a wild-card, but you've saved me countless times before – I can't say I trust you fully, but I know that you only do things when they're for the best, so. And as for Lambo and I-Pin, I'm pretty sure they've either forgotten or they won't say anything because they wouldn't know what they're talking about. If nothing else, I-Pin I can reason with, and Lambo I can bribe to keep his mouth shut with some candy."

Reborn adjusted his fake eyeglasses. "Then what's your problem, if you're so confident about the people you've told?"

"That others will find out on their own." He let himself sink into the ground.

Reborn grimaced. "They'll only find out if you two slip up." Reborn crossed his little legs and scrawled on the clipboard some more. "Or, rather, _when._"

"Don't make me nervous like that!" Tsuna quipped, sitting up quickly. Reborn glanced up disdainfully from his clipboard and Tsuna laid back down just as Reborn again lowered his head.

Tsuna sighed abruptly, laying his hands in an X over his chest. "I also..." he began, but then he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "I don't know."

"No, what?" Reborn said.

Tsuna sighed, his entire upper body moving with the exhale. His eyes asked the endless blue above them for the exact words.

"Hayato. I wanna _kiss_ him. We've already been on four dates. Nothing yet. A few times I thought something was really going to happen, finally... I don't know. But I can barely stand it anymore. Every time I see him I want to just – agh. Grab him and. Kiss him. My self-control is fading."

Scribbling furiously on the clipboard, Reborn thought on it for a minute. "The thing about a kiss is, it has to happen at the perfect time or it won't be satisfying, and the perfect moment never comes when you want it to. It just comes. You're too stressed over things you can't control, No-Good Tsuna," he said with a nod.

Tsuna's lips curved sideways. "I guess so," he said. He turned his head in Reborn's direction, and when he was not met with Reborn's vast black eyes, he sat up. "What are you writing down, there, anyway? I haven't said _that _much."

Reborn gave his student one little glare, held up the clipboard vertically and turned it around. He had doodled a caricature of Tsuna slipping on a banana peel. Tsuna flashed him a _'Really?' _smirk, eyebrows knitted, biting on the inside of his lip. Then Reborn set the clipboard down and stood to dust his hands.

"Come on, Tsuna, let's continue your training. Just try to forget your troubles and focus on this, what you're doing, right here, right now."

Tsuna stood with his feet planted firmly in the grass, cracking his knuckles and breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth. His forehead and hands sparked within seconds. He leaned into a fighting stance and aimed an outstretched arm at the candle in front of him. Reborn noticed the increasing size of the flames.

"Don't shoot the candle," Reborn reminded. "Light the thing itself."

Tsuna narrowed his glowing orange eyes. "I'm trying," he grunted. He curled his fingers inward around his palm to contain the growing fire.

After a moment of nothing, Reborn started talking. "Tsuna, you're the first student I've ever tried to teach this technique to. You're the first who's been capable, strong enough. If you perfect this, you'll be almost invincible."

He tried for a moment more, concentrating so hard he thought his brain was going to implode – but then his arms fell limp, consumed by a fire that just as quickly disappeared.

He groaned. "Nope," Tsuna said.

Reborn grimaced. He held his baby hand over the top of the candle. "Not even warm. Tsuna, are you sure you're concentrating on the right thing?" he said.

"I am." Then he snarked, "Have you considered, since this is the first time you've tried teaching this, that _you _could be doing something wrong?" That earned him a slap from Reborn.

**XXVIII. Every family has that one slutty uncle who everyone loves to gossip about but nobody actually talks to... **

The laundry room on the second floor, in its perpetual heat as it was always so crowded with people and whirring machines, didn't make it any better for Hayato. The clothes in the basket he held to his abdomen as he climbed the stairs were still warm and steaming. When he reached his apartment after what seemed like an endless journey in soapy nausea, he set the basket down not-so-gently, sighed and took out the key to unlock the deadbolt.

But when he turned the key, there was no click to signal that the deadbolt had been unlocked. Confused and a little nervous, he picked up the basket with both hands and held it up with one hand and one knee while he removed the key, turned the knob and shoved open the door with the other hand.

Inside he found his occasional roommate sprawled out on the futon-couch in front of a porn channel – and this roommate was _not _the cat.

"Oh, hey, Hayato," Shamal rasped with a wave, and he took a swig of sake straight from the bottle.

Hayato groaned and kicked the door shut behind him. "Don't 'Oh, hey, Hayato' me!" he said. He slammed the basket down in front of one of the kitchenette counters. "What gives, man? You've been gone for, like, six months now – I haven't seen you since November!" He set his hands on his hips.

"Did you miss me?" Shamal said.

"_No, _I did not miss you," Hayato said. "I want to know what happened to you."

Shamal tipped the bottle almost vertically over his lips. "Hey, all you need to know is that I paid the rent on time, 'k? My business is none of your business."

Hayato rolled his eyes. "Some 'caretaker' you've turned out to be..." he muttered. Then he stomped forward with purpose, brows knitted and teeth ground together, and swiped the bottle from the doctor just as the latter was about to take another sip. Shamal made a desperate expression up at the boy. Hayato walked backwards to the sink in the kitchenette and poured the rest of the bottle empty, _glug glug glug_, and Shamal watched the whole thing in horror.

When he was certain that the very last drop had left the bottle, Hayato opened the trash can in the corner and smashed the bottle to pieces on the inside wall before dropping all the glass in and closing the lid. "The fuck, Shamal?"

"M-m-m – _my sake_!" Shamal was almost crying.

"You may pay half the rent and claim that you live with me, but I do _everything else _around here. I keep this place clean. I buy food and pay all the other bills. I go to school. You, meanwhile, disappear for days, weeks, sometimes _months_ on end, and only come here when you finally feel like sobering up. You come in here and trash the place just like you always do, cause a whole hell of a lot of trouble for me that I really don't need, and then leave and I can't even get a hold of you. You're my _legal guardian_, Shamal. Fucking act like it." Hayato's glare at the man only intensified. "Now put some goddamn pants on!" He turned around and glanced at the TV screen to see two women and a man on a –

"And turn that shit off! We share the cable with our neighbors! This is pay-per-view! I don't want them to see mother-fucking _porn_ on their bill! I'll have some questions to answer!"

Shamal, with his trousers half-on, fumbled for the remote control a few seconds before shutting off the television at the woefully good part. He pulled his pants up the rest of the way and even re-fastened his snakeskin belt. He looked up at Hayato angrily. "Jesus, Hayato, since when were you such a little bitch?" he said.

"Since I decided not to take any more of your bullshit," Hayato quipped. He began to peel clothes out of the laundry basket, fold them and organize them on the countertop.

Doctor Shamal sulkily laid on his back, frowning, and pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and over his body.

"Now, listen," Hayato said, once all his fresh clothes were put away, "I'm leaving in about an hour and a half, and I'll be back tonight, so please, while I'm out, don't fuck anything up."

Shamal tilted his head up at his roommate.

"No visitors, no messes, no pay-per-view, no leaving this apartment at all." He had been counting the rules off with his fingers and then he gestured behind him. "Food's in the kitchen if you need it. But get some rest. You look like hell."

"I could say the same for you," he said. Hayato looked him dead in the eyes. "When's the last time you got decent sleep?"

The corner of Hayato's mouth quirked downward.

"... Have the nightmares come back? Are you in pain?" he asked.

"Fuck off," Hayato snapped, and crossed his arms over his chest and looked away.

Shamal gawked his head back. "Well, then. Fine. I just won't do anything."

Hardly satisfied, Hayato started toward the bathroom. Merely being in Shamal's presence made him feel like he needed a shower.

"So, ah," Shamal said, "Where are you going?"

"You didn't answer when I asked you where you've been, so I'm not telling you where I'm going," Hayato said simply.

Shamal smirked. "Touché." He paused a moment; Hayato didn't move much.

"I was in Thailand," Shamal said. "You could probably guess what I did there."

Hayato collected his thoughts for a moment. "Thailand," he echoed, and he chuckled a bit. He turned around and saw Shamal looking over the back of the couch at him. "So? Where are you going?" Shamal asked again.

"A date," Hayato said.

"A _date?_" Shamal beamed. "Hoh, my! Hayato's finally becoming a man!"

Hayato lowered his eyebrows. "A bunch of friends will be there, too," he added.

"That doesn't matter! You've got a date!" Shamal said. "You're what, eighteen? It's about time."

"_Sixteen_," Hayato corrected.

"Hah! Right." Shamal crashed his head back down on the pillow. "I had always thought that you were that type of guy who _just didn't get it_, and would live and die alone and never get laid or feel the tender flesh of a woman's –"

"Thanks," Hayato said sarcastically with an unseen bitter smile.

"But! But – I suppose I was wrong." The doctor flashed a thumbs-up over the back of the couch.

Rolling his eyes and shrugging, Hayato turned on his heel and took the last few steps into the bathroom. "This isn't my first date, you know," he said. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Shamal giving him two thumbs-up. The doctor's arms loudly fell to his sides. Hayato shut himself in the bathroom – and was sure to lock the door.

**XXIX. "You would call the garden rules out like commands." - "The Garden Rules", Snow Patrol. **

Children chased each other in circles around the confetti-covered sign in front of the Namimori Town Garden: _Happy Greenery Day. _It was amazing how green the place looked behind the colorful outfits of the visitors. This would be the site of the couple's sixth date, though most of those accompanying them had no idea of this.

Hayato, of course, had expected himself to be late. He half-jogged to the entrance of the garden, through the dense crowd, and felt relieved when he saw only a few of his friends there. The Shimon family: Koyo and Julie playing red hands and Adelheid pretending she totally didn't want to join them, Shitopi and Rauji frolicking with kids less than half their age, Kaoru lurking under a shady old tree, and Enma sort of hiding behind his faithful second-in-command, glancing wildly around the area with unneeded shyness. Hayato could swear he had caught a glimpse of Hibari sitting alone up in a tree a little further back. Assured he was okay now, Hayato slowed his pace.

Shitopi immediately stopped in her tracks when she saw her little lovely, and she raced toward him with wide-open arms. "Gokudera-kun~!" She leapt onto him, latching her arms around his upper back, burying her face in the crook of his neck and giggling wildly. He just tried to stand still under her weight.

She dismounted him and looked him up and down. "Oh, that's disappointing," she said with an exaggerated frown. "I wanted to see you in a kimono. You would look so cute!" She clasped her hands together.

"You're not wearing one either," he pointed out. She was wearing jeans and a concert T-shirt, not too dissimilar to his personal choice of attire for that day.

"Well, see, I was going to make one for myself, but I ran out of time," she said.

He cocked an eyebrow. "Why would you make one? They can be just as easily bought. Besides, nobody wears kimonos on Greenery Day," he said.

She looked around. "I dunno. A few people are wearing them." Shitopi shrugged.

"Yeah, no," Hayato scoffed. "Kimonos are just weird to me. I'm fine in the clothes I have on right now, thank-you-very-much. I know it's a Japanese thing and I respect the culture, but it's just not my ta..."

"Gokudera-kun!" "'Dera!" Hayato whirled around and saw two young men rather fast approaching. One was Yamamoto, a gray and navy-blue kimono flowing behind him. The other, the love of Hayato's life – also in a kimono.

"T-Tenth," Hayato murmured, and instantly began to sweat.

When the two friends reached him and Shitopi, Yamamoto held out his arms and twirled with an excited grin on his face. "It was gathering dust in my dad's closet and he and I are pretty much the same size now, so I figured, you know, why not?" Gokudera, however, paid no attention to Yamamoto's kimono. He couldn't stop staring at the Tenth's. _He looks so... cute. _

"My mom made me wear this," Tsuna lamented. He held out the his arms far less enthusiastically. "I don't like it. It's so – _girly_." He groaned.

"Naw! I think you both look good," Shitopi said. She put her elbow on Hayato's shoulder and pointed at him with her thumb. "Don't ask his opinion, though. He thinks kimonos are weird-looking."

"N-now hold on a minute!" Hayato said. Shitopi and Yamamoto just laughed. Tsuna laughed a little too, and that got a small, nervous chuckle out of Hayato, and before their other two friends noticed, the boyfriends met eyes and Tsuna winked at the other, smiling.

Hayato nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a small push on the back of his shoulders. He turned and was faced immediately by Bianchi. She looked cruelly satisfied. Her face was uncovered, so as soon as he saw it he turned his head away and shielded his eyes.

"What the hell, Sis?" he said. But she ignored him when Shitopi gasped at her.

"Oh, my God, I love it!" Shitopi exclaimed. She clapped her hands together. Bianchi spun on her toes. "Why, thank you. I actually wore it last year too," she said, and the two girls exchanged a short laugh.

Futa tugged on Tsuna's baggy sleeve and that got the two of them talking.

"I'm probably going to walk a little ahead," Bianchi announced. "It's a really nice day to have some alone time with Reborn." She set her hand atop Hayato's head and began messing with his hair. "Just wanted to say hey to my emo little brother."

He smacked her off. "Go – just go walk with Reborn," he grumbled.

"See you later, then," she said, and she sauntered off.

When he sensed that she was far enough away, Hayato removed his hand from over his eyes. "Whew," he breathed. "Crisis averted."

"You look kinda pale. You all right?" Shitopi said, leaning in uncomfortably close to him.

Yamamoto half-shrugged. "His sister makes him feel sick," he said.

"Aw, I'm sorry," Shitopi said. She patted Hayato gently on the back.

Futa begged Tsuna to take him to see the rose bushes, so Tsuna complied, and after a quick word, Yamamoto followed.

Shitopi smiled knowingly at Gokudera-kun, raising and lowering her eyebrows repeatedly. He gave her an annoyed expression.

"It's pretty amazing, what effect your boss has on your opinions," she said.

His lips tightened. He looked like he wanted to say something. But he did not say anything.

She paused for just a few seconds. Her smile grew slightly wider, delving deep into his eyes. He stared back at her with some horror as to what she could possibly see, but before he could find the breath to articulate, she closed her eyes, spun around, and waltzed away.

0o.o0o.o0

The fresh, damp scents of spring flowed through his skin, and Tsuna breathed it in deep, feeling the life grow inside.

Branches bowed over him like a cathedral, green sunlight streaming through to flirt on his skin. He spotted a young family walking hand-in-hand, far ahead. He knew he was not alone, but here, where all noise was absorbed by ancient, voiceless trees, he felt a pleasant solitude.

He was walking at the front of his massive group of friends. When he heard quick footsteps approaching him, he looked to his side and Haru cropped up. Kyoko was on his other side.

"Kyoko-chan, Haru," he greeted with a calm voice and smile.

The girls were wearing kimonos they had made especially for themselves. They had the same design and fabric, though Haru's was yellow and pink while Kyoko's was blue and purple. Haru had let her hair down for the first time in a long time, and she looked like a model. Kyoko wore no makeup today so the raw beauty of nature could reflect unobstructed in her face.

"Hi, Tsuna-san!" Haru replied unnecessarily loudly. "I love your kimono!"

Kyoko nodded. "Yes, I do too. It suits you."

"Thanks," Tsuna said. He folded his fingers together underneath the wide arms.

As the conversation carried on, mostly between the two girls, Tsuna could not stop staring at Kyoko. But something was off this time.

A few months ago, Tsuna would keep his eyes fixed on Kyoko Sasagawa because, naïvely, he thought her beauty, her smile unmatched. He would lose all words and just gaze at her in silent awe. His heart, stomach would flutter uncontrollably. He would feel warm all over. He thought she would be the one he would spend the rest of his life with. But now – since a few months ago, actually – she was still beautiful, there was just... A change in him. Suddenly she didn't seem all that important anymore. He stared in this moment so he could remark how indifferent he felt towards her.

Tsuna tried to be as inconspicuous as possible when he glanced over his shoulder at Hayato. The latter was near the back of the group, talking and debating with Ryohei and Koyo over the importance of public education (or rather, Hayato argued, the uselessness thereof.) A smile spread across Tsuna's face. That boy was the one who made him crazy, inside and out. When he pictured Hayato in his mind, how much he loved him, he felt surreal. When he was with Hayato, his heart raced, he smiled uncontrollably, he just couldn't be happier.

And even though he pretended to be involved in the conversation with Kyoko and Haru, he could not stop thinking about how it would feel to kiss him.

0o.o0o.o0

"This looks like a good place to stop for our picnic." The clearing, just beyond a thin layer of brush, was large, flat and free of any other people. It seemed perfect.

Between the Shimon, the kids and the other usual suspects, the group had to set up enough space for 18 people and their food. By the time everyone settled down, half the clearing was covered in a hodgepodge of different picnic blankets. Ryohei and Kyoko brought a classic red-and-white checkered blanket, Yamamoto laid out an old tablecloth from before his family's restaurant's most recent renovation, those of the Sawada household doubled-up a spare sheet, and the Shimon took along three beach towels.

After chewing a hole in the center of a slice of cheese, Lambo peeked his eye through it at Tsuna. "I see you," he teased.

Tsuna scowled. "Stop playing with your food," he said. "You know Mom wouldn't let you do that if we were eating at home."

"Maman's not here, idiot," Lambo said.

"But she told me to look after you guys," Tsuna said, his patience tried. Lambo begrudgingly lowered the cheese slice from his face and began nibbling on the corners. I-Pin said something to him but Tsuna couldn't tell what.

Beside Tsuna, Gokudera had gotten himself into another hot debate, this time with Yamamoto.

"The Beatles does not count as a rock band," Gokudera huffed. "Therefore, it should not be counted as the 'Best Rock Band of All Time.'"

"Why not?" Yamamoto said. "They do have some rock songs."

"Yes but The Beatles is more variety than rock," Gokudera said.

Yamamoto cocked his head to the side to think a second. He nodded a little. "You have to admit, though, they are the most popular band. I mean, they were 'bigger than Jesus!'" he said.

"Of course. But my assertion still stands: Led Zeppelin is the greatest of all rock bands." They nodded at each other in agreement.

Shitopi, who had been eavesdropping a little from across the blanket mass, shouted, "U2 is second!" into their conversation, and that got the boys whipped into a frenzy again.

Lambo was pounding around his paper plate. "I don't want any more! I hate vegetables!" he protested. I-Pin, who had cleared her place like the polite little girl she was and now had half a slice of cake in front of her, watched the scene with a hint of disgust.

"I told you to eat three. You had five on your plate. There are only two missing." Tsuna crossed his arms and nodded authoritatively.

"I hate math too!" Lambo said.

"_Eat it_," Tsuna said.

"No!"

Tsuna sighed exasperatedly and slid the kid's plate a little out of the way to get him to stop making a mess. "Look, look, look," he said, "You don't have to eat any more if you will please just be quiet."

Calming down almost immediately, Lambo pointed to the tray near the opposite side of Tsuna. "I want a cream puff."

Tsuna rolled his eyes. "Fine..."

As he was immersing in his "friendly chat" with Gokudera over image vs. quality in the music industry, Yamamoto received a tentative tap on the shoulder. He held up his finger, instantly pausing the dispute, and turned to see the wide, honey-colored eyes of the girl seated right next to him.

"Yamamoto-kun, would you please hand me a cream puff?" Kyoko asked.

Yamamoto grinned. "Sure," he said.

"I got it," Gokudera said...

0o.o0o.o0

He could feel the tingle of the Tenth's hand before he even knew that was what he touched. His head instantly shot up and to his left. Just at that second, Tsuna faced his right and his eyes met with Hayato's.

Their thumbs had barely grazed, but behind the tower of Namimori-style cream puffs, their fingertips gravitated toward each other, joining cautiously, feather-light. The boys watched their fingers further intertwine until it became impossible to tell where one hand ended and the other began. The smoothness of the tender skin there, the impatient heat on the insides, the secrecy of their meeting. When the boys made eye contact again, it took all their combined self-control to keep from lurching and grabbing and squeezing each other, in front of everyone. Tsuna strained his lips into a precious smile. Hayato returned it.

(Yamamoto, mentally rolling his eyes since he knew what had to be going on there, reached around Gokudera and plucked a cream puff off the top of the stack. Futa took another for Lambo. The two of them – the baseball player and the ranking prince – exchanged quick, knowing smirks before giving the cream puffs to their respective friends.)

The boys subtly leaned toward one another, and lowered their connected hands onto the grass between them. The cream puff tray had their act completely hidden. Hayato squeezed the Tenth's knuckles. Tsuna glanced down at them, his heart fluttering in all directions.

A sudden wave of reality crashed over them. It made Tsuna gasp, and the two of them tried their best to look innocent, their eyes darting away. They still kept their hands together; they tried to turn off the feeling there so it wouldn't affect them, but it was hard to do, barely able to be contained.

Tsuna quietly watched the three small children to his left, Lambo biting impatiently into the pastry and licking off the cream that squirted out the sides, I-Pin daintily forking pieces of cake, and Futa absentmindedly crunching potato chips while reading a book on medicinal plants in the Amazon Rainforest. Gokudera, eyes wandering nervously, turned to the tall friend on his right. "So, yeah..." he asked, "What were we talking about again?" Yamamoto just chuckled and elbowed him.

Inside, Tsuna was tingling intensely, about to burst. It took so much willpower to control his natural reactions – prevent his cheeks from erupting into a shade of red so deep it was probably inhuman. He even considered throwing himself into the negative state to cool down.

_I want him, now, badly. He's right here next to me. Right here – I have his hand – I feel his aura – I smell him, he smells like soap and grass – and I can't even do anything. _

_If only for a few seconds, everyone else could just disappear... _

He rotated his head in Hayato's direction, slowly, so as to not attract too much attention. He was met with the back of Hayato's head: thin, windswept silver hair, flayed down the neck, hiding all but the very bottom of some tattoo Tsuna swore he had never noticed before. Of course, this part of him, just like all others, made thoughts race in Tsuna's head. His eyes traced down Hayato's neck, to the hood of the jacket he wore, a thinner one with white skulls raining on a charcoal-gray background and the drawstrings all stretched out and frayed; to the shoulder, down the arm, to the wrist crowded with bracelets, to his hand, fingers long and slender and pale like the legs of an innocuous spider. Then he looked up at the back of Hayato's head again. It felt as though a hot bubble of temptation boiled in Tsuna's stomach and slowly began its ascent up his esophagus. Some odd noise rumbled out of his throat, perhaps to try and tame that bubble.

Even while interacting with Yamamoto, Gokudera could feel a pair of eyes piercing into the back of his head. He politely-but-abruptly stopped talking, and he turned his head a little, and pondered whether he really felt someone watching him or whether it was just his imagination, before he shifted his weight almost entirely to face his boss. Yes, the Tenth had been staring at him, and he still stared at him, rather intensely, like he was concentrating on something inside his mind.

"Tenth?" he said, blinking at him with sympathetic eyes. "Do you need something?"

Tsuna continued to stare, but he refocused. Hayato's face sharpened itself in the fog of Tsuna's mind. He stared at it wholly for what felt like a long while, trying to figure out a spot for his eyes to land. Eventually he became fixated on Hayato's lips. He studied every curve. The color. The innate scowl, the fragile smile, the way they quivered ever-so-slightly. He wanted to feel those lips on his own. They were so close, dangerously close, yet so far away. Like some sort of sacred barrier or repulsive magnetism stood between them. Briefly, Tsuna zoned out to his entire face, and he had to make the decision.

… _You know what? _

"Screw it."

He threw himself forward, grabbing Hayato around the back of his neck, and their lips collided.

Hayato shut his eyes and gave in to the kiss right away, and he felt every other part of his body go limp as the sparks flew around their mouths. He could feel everything, and everything felt absolutely wonderful. It was so soft and warm and just –.

The boys broke off for half a second before starting another, one that was deeper and more sure. Hayato cupped his hands around Tsuna's cheeks while Tsuna wrapped his arms around Hayato's torso; they came much closer. Their hearts were soaring. They even twisted the kiss a little.

_It's like a scene from a romance movie_, Tsuna thought, _Except better, because this is real. _

They broke it off gently, making no sound, riding the curves of each other's lips until they became separate human beings again. And they would have continued. They wanted to, they would have, except for the 16 pairs of eyes pointed straight at them. Both boys, now realizing they were practically in each other's laps, turned to face their mutual friends. Hayato grew very pale, and Tsuna became very red.

The majority of the friends were just gawking at them, like they had no idea that would happen, did that just happen, no way, oh, my God. A few others had looks that said for them, _Finally_. Even fewer looked casually at them, _Yeah, so what? _

"Um" was all Tsuna could get out of his mouth. Gokudera was flat-out speechless.

One second of silence. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten...

Shitopi pulled a mini-gel pen and small notepad out of her back pocket. "So, Kaoru owes four-hundred yen, Julie three-hundred, Adel three-hundred fifty, Rauji six-hundred, Koyo two hundred. Enma and I will be splitting everything evenly, which means..." She thought for a second, tapping the end of her pen to her chin, "My closet just grew nine-hundred twenty-five yen worth of new clothes bigger." She grinned.

Adelheid sighed. "We'll pay you when we get home," she groaned.

Hayato and Tsuna scanned the entire circle of people after this reaction. The Shimon now mostly looked defeated, though Enma and Shitopi were rather pleased with themselves. Futa, Lambo, I-Pin, Chrome, Hana and Yamamoto didn't seem all that bothered. Ryohei was having trouble righting his extremely unhinged jaw. Kyoko gazed down at her knees, her hands in her lap, quiet, withdrawn. Haru grinned widely after a short while.

Another pause stretched itself between the Sky and the Storm. The others in the group chattered quietly, their voices only weak offenses to the thick expectancy clinging to the spring air. Tsuna weakly clenched and unclenched his hands around the material of Hayato's jacket, and Hayato had lowered his hands to Tsuna's shoulders.

"Um," Tsuna said again. "I guess... Hayato and I have a _bit_ of a confession to make, huh?"

**XXX. Disappointment. **

When Hayato finally got home, much later than he expected, he noted the snoring doctor on the couch. In the shallow darkness of the apartment he was still able to find the remote to turn off the television, which was tuned to only a news channel. He was sure to be as quiet as possible. He entered the tiny bathroom, shutting the door but not locking it this time, and emerged after a few short minutes wearing different clothes and with glasses on his face.

He grabbed the electronic cigarette from near the outlet and was in the beginning process of his habit when Shamal awoke.

"I see you've stopped smoking real cigarettes," Shamal said. He sat up languidly against the back of the couch, his brown eyes still soaked in exhaustion.

Leaning against the kitchenette counter, Hayato took his first drag of the night. Ever since his boss' epic battle with Byakuran, Hayato had cut his smoking rate from upwards of three packs a day to, now, just two daily uses (or three if he was stressed) of a fake and far less harmful cigarette with low nicotine doses. If that wasn't progress, he didn't know what was. Obviously all his friends were very happy that he had taken the initiative to kick the addiction.

"I thought I had switched already before you left," Hayato said.

Shamal shook his head slightly. "Must not have noticed."

Hayato moved from the kitchenette to the couch and sat down. He took another, deep drag, lowered the e-cig from his lips, and held the vapor in for a moment before he barely opened his mouth and exhaled slowly, lightly. Shamal observed his roommate's features closely for a moment. Then a smirk crept onto his face.

"So, how did your date go?" Shamal asked.

Hayato shrugged, or maybe he didn't. He casually adjusted his glasses with his free hand. Shamal scanned his face up and down again, and this time, he was sure.

"Hayato Gokudera, you kissed her, didn't you?"

He paused mid-drag and turned to Dr. Shamal. "How do you know?" he said through clenched teeth, with a begrudging tone.

"You did. I can see it in your eyes," Shamal said.

Facing forward and shutting his eyes, he closed his lips fully around the e-cig and inhaled. _He wasn't exactly denying it. _

"Wow!" Shamal said. "Way to go! Now I gotta know who she is – come on, tell me."

"No way," Hayato grunted.

"Please?"

Hayato shook his head, a tiny, excited smile flashing across his face before he regained seriousness with a subtle eye-roll.

"Three guesses?"

"Fine." Both men leaned back into the cushions. Hayato crossed his arms, Shamal crossed his legs at the ankles. The game had begun.

Shamal thought for a minute, chewing on his bottom lip. "Erm, that Shitopi girl seems to like you a lot."

"Nope. Next." He spoke concisely as he fidgeted with the e-cig.

"Hmm... That one chick, in your homeroom last year, with the nice ass. Uh. Megumi Tanazaki, right?"

"She moved," he said. "Next."

After pondering just a second more, Shamal snapped his fingers. "Haru Miura!"

Hayato made a buzzer noise and a thumbs-down. He stood from the couch to lean against the kitchenette counter again.

Shamal frowned. "Hayato! Won't you just tell me? Please?" He cocked his head a little to make himself look more sincere, but Hayato just snarked. "Nope."

"Please?" "No." "Please?" "No."

"But I _need_ to know! Who's your girlfriend?" Shamal put his hands together and bowed forward at Hayato, who was taking another glorious drag.

Hayato stared at him for a moment, his eyes sinking. Sighed out the vapor. Switched off the e-cig and set it down. Rested his elbows on the counter and blinked at the doctor slowly. "She's not my girlfriend. _He's _my boyfriend."


	4. The minute people fall

_Italicizing _**is my friend. **

**A big thanks to all who reviewed/faved/alerted/read. (: **

**Chapter Three: ****"The minute people fall in love, they become liars."**** - Harlan Ellison **

**XXXI. I just can't find the strength. **

_Hijacked, lost track,  
>Light fades,<br>Another day left,  
>Its long shadows lure you in. <em>

_The more you look,  
>The less you see,<br>So close your eyes  
>And start to breathe. <em>

_You said yourself, this wasn't easy.  
>You said yourself, this wasn't easy. <em>

- "Canvas", Imogen Heap.

0o.0o.o0

He could see him beyond the fire, hear his breathing through the screams. Standing there, his expression flat – for a moment, a glint of fear, of the deepest sympathy, before he looked away. Up at the rafters. To his feet below. The puddle of gasoline was getting closer—

_Don't look away! Look at me! What are you doing? Save me!_

–He was not in pain, though he knew he should have been. He heard his own screams – he knew he was the one making these noises – but he felt completely soundless. The stench of gasoline overwhelmed the air.

An anonymous man placed his hand lightly on the boy's back. He looked down at the boy and whispered something. The boy cast a glance at the burning man, his eyes hard enough to scratch diamond. A demon would have enjoyed the fire, but he did not enjoy it; an angel would have stopped the fire, but he did nothing to stop it. _He was just a boy, trapped in-between heaven and hell. Neither god nor devil nor human being. Numb almost to the core, and that little core, with the erratically-beating heart and the devastatingly brilliant mind, melted along with the man's skin, bones, life. _In this moment, he could not tell.

Because the real man didn't know this boy. He barely knew the other man in the room, the mysterious one, in the suit full of poorly disguised bloodstains, with his hand on the boy's back. He himself did not know that boy, as he was this burning man, and he didn't know who he was even in his own point of view. His last few terrifying moments, and they had been wrought by a child.

The man collapsed further into his seat, staring down at the flaming scraps of flesh that began to rain from his body. He sat upright again and screamed louder for what he had lost, for he could not bare to look anymore. The man in the suit walked away, the echo of his shoes on the warehouse floor drowned out by the piercing shrieks, and he did not even look back when he shut the door behind him on the way out. Leaving the boy there to stare blankly at his agony.

The boy disappeared after a brief time; the burning man further writhed in pain; and the boy returned to the front of him, screwing a silencer onto the end of a handgun. Standing far enough away so as to not set himself alight, the child took aim, using both hands, steady and dead-on, like an adult. He cocked the gun slowly. His face was drawn, brooding, his green eyes too deep to be a mere child's. His silver hair was long and ratted. He was dressed in rags. This was a human child reduced to an animal – the only way he could survive here. And at that instant, he realized:_ this boy was himself. _

"_Mi dispiace_," the boy murmured like a promise. His index finger pressed on the trigger – he blinked as the bullet flew out–

Hayato threw his head backward, his neck and upper back arching, a silent scream broken in half. There were those rusted ceiling beams, crisscrossing over him like a jail cell. The gasoline smell, everything red and numb and suddenly his peripherals started fading to black, and everything became still. He did not feel his arm convulse upward, behind him, or grab onto something weakly. He held his other arm in front of his face but as they met he did not notice or feel anything until–

He gasped as he drove the metal edge into his wrist. Right at the center of a thick blue vein. Blood rushed up around it. His eyes squeezed shut. Then he hissed as the blade carved down his arm, cutting through old scars and fresh skin. Every advancement stung harshly immediately; but he went slowly, allowing his brain to react, giving him an intense high that grew larger as the cut got longer. The blade reached all the way down to his elbow before he pressed in hard one last time, at an angle, making himself whimper. He drew it out sloppily. At that point he knew it was over, he was okay, it was all going to be okay now.

His left arm fell limp over the side of the futon to drop the blade to the floor with hardly a noise. Hesitantly he opened his eyes and saw his right forearm, buzzing, shaking, hovering over him, split in half. Hayato felt a rush at the sight of it – he recognized the surge but not the feeling itself. For what felt like hours, he simply lay there, showering his face and neck and chest in his own blood. Each drop felt hot and glorious. Eventually the flow began to decrease – he felt alarmingly dizzy. That was when he turned over and stood up, his delirium wearing off and vertigo setting in, and walked through his own apartment. Not the warehouse. His own apartment. Flat white ceilings, no traces of gasoline, no fires.

He trudged to the bathroom to take a first look at himself in the medicine cabinet mirror. His pale skin showed in only small blotches from underneath the blood. It had filled in the deep crevices under his eyes from night after night of no sleep. He may have been awake now, but beyond the thin impression of relief in his eyes, there still lived the terror. His hair was streaked with red. His neck was painted in it. The last few wet layers dripped down his abdomen, thoroughly soaking the cheap tee he was wearing. A wide, shallow puddle had already formed underneath him. For balance he propped his nearly-clear left arm up against the mirror, and he took a close look at the damage he had done.

The cut was deep this time, very deep. Not as deep as he had made it a few times before, but even so. He could not remember which dream this was, exactly, anymore, but it had to be quite a painful one for him to be so eager to get out of it. Every dream and reality seemed to have that blade, right there, the only escape route.

Hayato opened the medicine cabinet to pluck his Sun Flame-channeling ring off the ring holder on the bottommost shelf. He slid it onto the middle finger of his left hand, lit it and traced it down the cut. He didn't look as he did this – he was guided only by the subtle warmth of the Sun Flame and the throbbing of the still-weeping cut. The yellow fire went out at the elbow. When he opened his eyes again to examine how he had done, the long wound was sealed up pretty nicely.

That was the thing about Sun Flames, though. They could heal some things: cuts, bruises, broken bones. But they could not bring back the dead, they could not get rid of scars, and they could not fix the mind. Sometimes Hayato wished he had no healing abilities at all, rather than this aesthetic time-speeder. He wondered, foolishly, what would happen if he shoved a Sun Flame-soaked Q-tip deep in his ear to find his Hippocampus and stab it.

He was still woozy while he opened the cabinet door again, dropped the ring onto the holder, and shut it. He figured he could clean himself up with a long, cathartic shower. He turned around to peel back the curtain; rotated the faucet to get the hot water flowing. As the mist bounced off the tile onto his bare feet, he fisted the hem of his blood-soaked shirt and lifted it inside-out and over his head. He cast it off into the sink, which already had fresh blood running down the bowl and the sides. He would bleach it later. Clouds of blood streaked over Hayato's chest in all directions. It caught his eye, and absent-mindedly he touched his fingertip to the spot just over his heart. He waved his finger over the X. And brought himself to smile faintly.

Beyond the door was the clock on the wall. Hayato noted that it was 4:17 on the morning of his first day back to school after Golden Week. He would see everyone today, in a few hours, through his normal facade. Quietly he hoped to himself that the Tenth was still asleep.

**XXXII. Unseasonably warm weather. **

Technically, they were upperclassmen; and as upperclassmen, they could use the courtyard confidently. Even the most unpopular kids, like Tsuna for instance, were welcomed here, simply because they were third-years. His friends had made a wise choice at the beginning of the year, unofficially reserving that bench in the shady corner of the school courtyard, with bricks on its left and a window into the 2-C science classroom behind it, and an untamed bush only a couple meters away. Hibari liked to hang out in that corner sometimes; Tsuna and his friends might spot him there and get all excited, but never approach him, even with the most extreme caution, like they had just seen in-person some exotic endangered animal they read about in a magazine.

Yamamoto cantered over to Tsuna, who was BSing answers for math homework while holding the paper precariously over his knees. He smiled at him in understanding. "Forgot there was homework over the break?" he asked.

Tsuna regarded his friend as the latter sat next to him. "Yes. But I did talk with Hayato yesterday and he thinks 'It's bogus that the teacher would assign work due the day we get back after Golden Week.'"

"Well, it's fine. I didn't do it either. I'm not even gonna try," Yamamoto said. "My bet is, Gokudera did it, and did it perfectly, but he's not gonna turn it in."

"He did do it," Tsuna affirmed. "He said it was 'insultingly easy', and I just kinda nodded at that, but _all_ math is 'insultingly easy' to Hayato, really. I don't get it at all so I'm guessing on everything. He offered to help me out with it but I said no thanks."

"Because we'd rather come by our grades honestly!" Yamamoto exclaimed. He set his hand up for a high-five, but dropped it just when Tsuna was about to hit him. "At least this time," he added. Tsuna laughed.

A minute-plus-change of silence. Tsuna continued skimming word problems and circling random answers. Yamamoto began to fan himself with his hand.

"You think I have time to towel down before class?" Yamamoto asked.

"Why, did you jog to school again?" Tsuna said.

Yamamoto nodded, though Tsuna didn't see. "I wonder if the locker room is open." He mused on that thought for a bit while Tsuna flipped to the next page of the math homework packet. "Maybe, if I asked Hibari or Adelheid politely to escort me there..."

Tsuna chuckled. "I highly doubt that," he said.

Yamamoto leaned backward and put his hands on the back of his head. "Let's see, what can we do to bribe them?"

"Adelheid? Kidnap Enma. Hibari-san? File paperwork and pray he processes it within the week. Or threaten to graffiti Kusakabe-san's helicopter – you know how much weight he has with Hibari-san." Tsuna set the pencil down beside him on the bench and now focused his attention on the conversation.

Yamamoto laughed. "I like that first idea. It's faster. How do you suppose we'll go at it?"

Tsuna just shrugged. "Tell Enma you have sakura-flavored Kit-Kats. He's addicted to those things," he explained. "Lure him into the old train station. Leave him with the Kit-Kats and a fully-charged DS with _Pokémon Black_ in it, or a few good manga. And ta-da! You have your leverage – just don't tell Adelheid he's okay." He and Yamamoto erupted into laughter.

"Why not give her a set of fake clues and riddles too in exchange for the school skeleton key while we're at it?" Yamamoto exclaimed. They laughed harder. Tsuna sighed out of it eventually.

Wiping his forehead with his wrist, Yamamoto sank into his place. "Nah. I think I'm fine. I don't smell too bad or anything," he said.

A moment's pause: Yamamoto swayed back and forth to some imaginary tune while Tsuna finished making up most of his math answers.

"How did you know how to kidnap Kozato, anyway?" Yamamoto asked.

"Simple," Tsuna replied. "You could kidnap me the same way. Just replace sakura-flavored Kit-Kats with raspberry-white-chocolate mochi and the old train station with the back room at the arcade." Yamamoto chuckled; Tsuna continued. "Kidnap Hayato: pretty much any kind of non-fishy food as the bait, sci-fi and technology magazines as the entertainment – and the location, that building the Town Festival Committee uses as a 'haunted house' every Halloween but that sits empty the rest of the year. Somehow it's even creepier when there aren't fake skeletons everywhere. A-apparently."

"Weird place," Yamamoto said. "How did you figure that one?"

"I have a formula. A mafia boss must know how to kidnap his own friends." Tsuna tilted his chin upward.

"Classy," Yamamoto replied.

Tsuna chuckled lightly. "Food's the bait. Food's almost always the bait. It's a great motivator. We're hungry teenagers, after all." Yamamoto leaned in, listening intently. "And you have to be tempted by someone you would otherwise trust," Tsuna continued. "We're cautious and we know it, so strangers would be ineffective." He put his index-finger up. "Entertainment is distraction – that's easy since I know what you guys like. For you, I would leave your baseball card collection because I know that you spend hours of your time looking through them and organizing them. You're super obsessive about it. Then it comes down to the holding location. That's tricky to figure out. It has to be someplace you've never been or haven't been much, yet not feel scared there. Enma hid out in that old train station for an hour once to avoid bullies. He knows the place, but _barely_. The back room of the arcade – I've never been in there, but I know it's there because I've seen the door and I've seen the owner go in and out. I would be a little freaked out, but still feel the general arcade vibe and that would comfort me. And remember when you and I volunteered at that haunted house place last Halloween, and Hayato said he wanted to do some exploring? Well, he found the third floor, and he told me there's some pretty 'intriguing' stuff up there. That place is freaky by nature, but Hayato, you know, he's always up for hardcore paranormal investigations."

Yamamoto blinked at Tsuna a few times, a bewildered smirk on his face. "You've been hanging out with Gokudera too much," he said.

"What?" Tsuna said.

"You're starting to sound like him. Like, using big words, and kind of a similar tone of voice."

Tsuna paused and the earth seemed to shake when the thought hit him. "Oh, my God, I _do _sound just like him!" His eyes went wide. He smacked both his cheeks to imitate a look of horror.

"Next step: you adopt an Italian accent that gets thicker the faster you talk," Yamamoto teased.

Tsuna squeezed his head on either side, thinking for a moment, before relaxing. "You know, there are worse people I could sound like..."

Yamamoto patted his best friend on the back. "Even so. You need to spend the day with some stupid people like me. Get your head clear," he said with that innocent grin that made everything seem better than it actually was.

Smiling halfheartedly, Tsuna gripped the edge of the bench seat. The first warning bell rang not even five seconds later.

"I wonder where Hayato is," Tsuna said as he put the paper and pencil in his backpack.

Yamamoto looked off to the side. "You know him: he either shows up to school an hour early, an hour late, or not at all."

"That's the thing, though," Tsuna said. He stood from the bench and slung his backpack over one shoulder.

"What do you mean?" Yamamoto asked, rising as well.

The two boys began walking side-by-side down the pathway through the courtyard, toward the door, dodging the group of six girls who were lobbying tennis balls at each other. It could be noted at this moment how strikingly different the boys were in height – Tsuna at 157.5 cm (5 foot 2), Yamamoto at 183 cm (6 foot even). Usually this disparity wasn't noticed because Gokudera, at 175 cm (5 foot 9), would walk in-between them to balance out the extremes.

"Haven't you noticed, so far this year–" Tsuna took a second to gather the thoughts to explain it. "Seventh and eighth grade. Hayato only played hooky when something big was happening, which usually meant the rest of us skipped with him. But he's been absent a lot this year already. I mean, school just started April first and we've had a week off, and he's already been out four times, not including today. Plus he's been tardy pretty much every morning too."

Yamamoto shrugged. "Maybe today's just one of those days for him. You know, that kind of day when you wake up and you're all like, _eh. Ugh. Wah. Blech. I don't wanna go to school. _I have days like that sometimes too. My mom calls it 'free spirit syndrome'... Then she and Dad pull me out of bed by my ankles and make me go to school anyway."

"Your parents do that too?" Tsuna asked. Then he shook off the thought. "E-even if he does have 'free spirit disease' or whatever, he sure has had it a lot lately."

"Then the trouble, I guess," Yamamoto said, nodding, "Is that no one's there to drag him out of bed against his will and motivate him."

"It seems that way," Tsuna replied.

Yamamoto grabbed the door handle and swung it open, a harsh breeze hitting Tsuna before he walked through with a mild "Thanks," Yamamoto with a chivalrous smile closing it behind them. The halls were still mostly empty. Generally people didn't start to move until the second warning bell or the third. The two friends didn't know what had compelled them to get ahead of the stampede, except maybe that they got to speed through the rest of their math homework in their empty classroom before the teacher came in. Once all the students were inside and settled, the teacher began his lesson, as if it were just a 100% normal day at Nami Middle. All the while, Tsuna kept glancing up from his paper at the vacant desk in the front right corner of the room, wondering and wishing.

**XXXIII. Reverse. **

The toilet seat nearly choked him as he clutched weakly at the sides, his face ghost-pale over the bowl. Bile bellowed out from his stomach and up his throat, and all he could do was give in to it. He wretched it out. It echoed all around him, he hated that ugly sound he made; the acidic taste all too poignant. When he was done, with this round at least, his eyes were still shut, and he was panting, sweating, exhausted, shivering and cold, and aching all over. His legs were straddled out under him like he couldn't control in which direction they went. He wiped the excess stomach acid off his lips with one hand, flushed the toilet with the other, and collapsed back onto the unforgiving tile floor. His chest throbbed with his labored breaths. He could feel all the grout lines on his bare back. Every little movement made him want to scream. Facing the ceiling, he squeezed his eyes shut even tighter. All the electric lights were off but that little unshaded window right there wasn't exactly helping his monster of a migraine.

Hayato should have expected this. The days after the particularly bad nightmares, his condition would be the worst, and he was faced with the decision between staying home alone with his hallucinations, or acting psycho in front of everyone and puking his guts out in a nasty public restroom. The former seemed like the better choice so as to not burden others. But, lying there feeling like death, of course he would rather have gone to school on any other day with the Tenth and all their friends.

**XXXIV. Living scrapbooks. **

Basil half-sprinted down the busy halls of the CEDEF base, pulling up his pants with one hand and trying to keep all the papers under his arm from flying everywhere. His triangular sword bounced up and down with each leg movement. He could feel the hole in the sole of his shoe expanding as he went. Maybe it was about time he went clothes shopping.

The door to his boss' office was slightly open – perfect for him to shove his way in without dropping anything. He trotted across the white tile floor and set the papers down on the desk. He was a little flushed but hardly panting. "Here you go, Sir," he said.

Iemitsu, his head resting on the back of his chair, spun lazily a few times before picking up the stack, skimmed the first few paragraphs of the first page, and threw it back onto the desk. "Thanks, Basil," he sighed, rubbing his forehead with his index finger and thumb.

"Not a problem, Sir," Basil said. He threw his boss a salute along with a wholehearted grin.

The man could barely bring himself to smile at his pupil, he was so tired. "Did you contact Nana and Tsuna, too?"

"I emailed Maman in your name this morning, Sir," Basil said.

"She respond?"

"I don't think so, not yet. Why do you ask, Sir?"

Iemitsu moaned and flopped his head down on his desk, narrowly missing the computer keyboard. "I _really _need a pick-me-up right now," he said.

Basil leaned over the desk, peering at the monitor at an angle. An open Word document blinked at him, with his boss' flustered musings, _asdfrtxladjpbahljd7 NANAAAAA. _"Perhaps you could leave a voicemail?" he suggested.

Just as soon as Iemitsu had started running his sweaty hands through his short platinum blond hair, he stopped, and sat up, an alert expression narrowing his face. He abruptly turned his head to look at Basil. "Dial." Basil complied, furiously tapping out the number on his master's phone.

Over the line, the phone rang once, twice, three times, five times, seven times. Finally, Nana's cheerful voice. "_You've reached the Sawada household. If you want to talk to Nana, Tsuna, Futa, Bianchi, Lambo or I-Pin, leave a message and we'll get back to you. Thanks!" _

"Damn," Iemitsu spat, but he quickly realized that he had said it into the speaker after the beep, so he lunged at the _END CALL _button.

"... Sir?" Basil, his back arrow-straight, cocked his head, concerned.

Iemitsu looked up at the boy desperately, a white-knuckled grip on the sides of the phone dock. He stared at Basil for a few seconds before another thought struck him. "Her cell. I'll call her cell." He yanked the phone up and mashed the numbers into the keypad. Basil's eyes wandered, and before the boy knew it he himself was wandering around the room, regarding the collage of photos that covered every possible centimeter of wall space.

He sensed a certain order to the photos: one large section of Nana, pictures of her as a schoolgirl, at graduation, wearing a wedding dress, in the hospital maternity ward, as a young and as a seasoned mother. Iemitsu and Nana Sawada had been such an attractive and idyllic couple all these years. (Basil recalled several stories told to him by his master of how, in her high school days, Nana was fascinated with astronomy – and the first time they met he BSed his way through an intense discussion of the sun with her and her friends, just to impress her, because he was so stricken by her eyes – and that night he went home and studied astronomy for hours, falling asleep at his desk – and joined the astronomy club at school that very week and saw her there at his first meeting – and their first date had been on a night cruise along the Namimori River – and he kissed her then under those stars – and well, the obsession with astronomy she eventually grew out of, but Iemitsu, she never quite did.)

Diverging from the Nana area was the montage of photos of Iemitsu and Nana's only, precious child, their son. Basil and Tsuna were in no way related – the latter the couple's biological child, the former a boy found as an infant and cared for jointly by Iemitsu and his business associate Oregano. But the two boys were about the same age. Whenever Basil saw Tsuna, in pictures or in person, he felt like he was looking at a real brother. Even though they never really knew of each other's existence until just about a year ago, and they contacted each other rarely, only through emails filled with small-talk or the occasional Facebook chat session. As soon as they would see each other, during any one of Basil's few trips to Japan, they were nearly inseparable. They just clicked instantly. Tsuna had even said, last time they had met up with each other, that Basil was the closest thing he felt he had to a brother. Sometimes Basil felt bad for Tsuna. Basil wasn't even Iemitsu's real son yet he got much more attention from the man than the other boy.

Basil got to thinking deeper about Tsuna. Off the wall he plucked a photograph that, from what he gathered from the pattern, was probably the most recent. Tsuna was leaning against a brick wall, Lambo and I-Pin lined up next to him, trying to look as cool. Basil studied it.

Iemitsu's voice floated up to Basil's consciousness. "Straight to voicemail. She must have her cell off or something," he said. He set the phone down, defeated.

Basil turned on his heels to face him, the photo held at his waist. Iemitsu smiled at him. "Nana sent in some new ones yesterday, actually – that's one of them," Iemitsu said. "Tsuna's a third year in middle school now. It's amazing to think that next year he's going into high school, you know? I mean, it seems like just yesterday I was teaching him how to walk, and now he's so old, and he's running the Vongola almost all on his own."

He noted Basil's thoughtful nod and frowned at himself. "I was just thinking the other day. I should put up more pictures of you. I'm very proud of you, too." He grabbed some papers off the messy piles on his desk and hit the edges against the desk surface, straightening them. "In two months I'm retiring, Basil. I'm going back home. Permanently. No more CEDEF for me. And you'll be taking my place." He stood from his chair and sauntered toward his pupil.

Immediately Basil's face brightened, a wide smile spreading across his face. "W-wh... Sir, are you... Serious? You want me to succeed you?"

Iemitsu nodded firmly, putting his hand on Basil's back. "Yup. Think: Basil, head of _La Consulenza Esterna Della Famiglia Vongola_," he said. He put his hand out and moved it through the air as though he were following the words.

Blushing from excitement, Basil looked down – he didn't know at what, but he just had to attempt at collecting his thoughts for a minute. All his life he had been groomed to work for the CEDEF, the external advisers to the greatest mafia family in the world. Now he was not just going to work for the CEDEF. He was going to _run_ it. His heart fluttered hotly in his chest.

Iemitsu patted him a couple of times. "Sorry I didn't tell you earlier," he said. He huffed into a confident smile.

Basil shook his head in a bewildered manner. He looked up, turning his head slightly, though he still couldn't see his boss and life-long father figure at this angle. "Does Tsuna know?" he asked.

"No," Iemitsu said, "But I'm sure he won't object once he does find out. You and he seem to get along very well, so."

Basil chuckled lightly at that. He imagined himself, standing beside a seated and adorned Vongola Decimo, exchanging proud smiles, years into the future. And Iemitsu somewhere in the crowd, admiring what a fine job he did raising those two boys. He thought about behind the scenes too. Oregano and Lal Mirch working for him, Gokudera and Yamamoto working for Tsuna. Tsuna would be married to Kyoko, and Basil would be married to that cute new girl in the technology sector, Rosemary, the one with the bright red hair and clever smile that reminded him of fire.

"S-Sir, I – I really don't know what to say," Basil breathed.

"Just do a good job," Iemitsu replied. He patted Basil again on the back, then began to pull away. "I know you will."

He could hear Iemitsu walk out of the office, every footstep echoing against the tile, shutting the door gently behind him. Basil stood stiff with disbelief for a few moments alone in the office that in two months would be his. He tried to think of what he could do to the place – warm up the decor a little bit, or maybe relocate the office entirely so there would be some windows – but at this time his mind was filled only with amorphous dreams of his future.

Finally he flipped the photograph up again, ready to pin it back on the wall, and he remembered. _It is a little unwise of Master not to inform Tsuna of the change... Maybe I should tell him. Yeah. He would want to know. He needs to know. After all, I'm going to have a very important role. _

After putting the photo back on the wall, Basil snuck over to his boss' computer. He set his hand lightly down on the mouse. Opened a new Internet window and typed in the Facebook url. He remembered that last time he went on Facebook, which seemed forever ago, he had changed the language to English so that it would help him learn. Since then he had become totally fluent, but it didn't harm the situation. He typed in his email address and password. Then he was instantly struck by how old his profile picture looked and how many unread messages and unanswered friend requests he had. Plus the site layout was different.

He panned over to his Friends list and clicked on Tsuna's picture. But he paid no attention to the details. He typed Tsuna a message:

_Hey. Guess who just got promoted! :D _

– and sent it.

He got kicked back to Tsuna's profile page. Tsuna had updated his status just yesterday evening: _school tomorrow, suuuucks :( I don't want golden week to end_.His Friends list was bigger than Basil had ever seen. (And Tsuna insisted he wasn't popular. Ha.) One thing that caught Basil's eye, however, was his relationship status.

In a relationship with Hayato Gokudera.

He raised an eyebrow at it, thought it might have been some sort of mistake. But he spotted the photo collection and clicked through the most recent ones, and in one of them, Tsuna and Gokudera were kissing. Basil looked at Tsuna's Wall.

_**P. Shitt:**__ finally you guys come out of the closet. best of luck to you tsuna. just cause gokkuns with you now tho doesnt mean ill stop fantasizing about him XD  
><em>_**Haru Miura:**__ Dont worry, I like you boys together. Almost as much as I like you with me. :]  
><em>_**Ryohei Sasagawa:**__ lookin good GOKUTSUNA ahaha ahahahaha_

Even more curious now, Basil clicked on Gokudera's profile page from Tsuna's friends list. It looked like Gokudera and Tsuna were opposite extremes when it came to Facebooking. Tsuna logged in at least once a week to update his status, respond to messages, and the like. Apparently two days ago was the first time Gokudera had logged onto Facebook since last Christmas – his Wall had pretty much fallen to anarchy, and he had disabled nearly every instant socialization feature. Everything he had written on the page was in both Italian and Japanese, including his status, which showed his disinterest as well. _Bitch please, I'm Tumbling. _Sure enough, however, there was that matching relationship status: In a relationship with Tsuna Sawada.

Basil didn't have much more time to take this in because Tsuna's request to chat popped up over the screen.

**Tsuna: **HEYY.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>HOLA.  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>BASIL.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>TSUNA.  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>UM.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>WUT.  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>WHY AM I STILL IN ALL CAPS.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>IDK.  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>lets stop that.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Yeah, it's hurting my eyes kinda

Basil chuckled a little. It reminded him of a time when he and Tsuna were being casual, and jokingly held an entire conversation talking like valley girls, "you know? Like, with all those, like, words and stuff? LOL totally?" By the end both boys were so hysterical in laughter they could barely make out any real words.

**Tsuna: **so u got a promotion! congrats bro  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Yes, super excited! Thank you :) I'm taking over your dad's position  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>! so ure gonna b my outside advisor!  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Yup  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>AWESOME :D :D sorry caps again. wen did u find out/  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Just now really..  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>srsly? ugh why doesnt my dad tell me these things. kinda important ykno?  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Sorry  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>oh no its not u basil. my dad. he needs t stop undermining me. cedef under hims given me alot of problems since i bcame boss. :(  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Well I hope I don't give you too much trouble.  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>im sure u wont. anyway. way to go, basil. u deserve it.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Thank you very much Decimo.  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>ew ok my first order to u: dont call me decimo. makes me uncomfortable.  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>just tsuna s perfectly fine.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Yessir. Um, if I could inquire...  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>hai?  
><strong>Basil: <strong>It's the middle of the morning where you are. How come you're on FB? Aren't you in school?  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>i am. library computer. proxy. fb wont go in the computer history. least not where school ppl will look. told teacher i needed to print sumthin. i did, still printing, so check fb.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Neat trick.  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>i learnt from hayato the master. he can get away w/ pretty much anything.

Basil chuckled awkwardly.

**Basil: **Speaking of which: I saw your relationship status. Mind telling me what that is about?  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>oh yea didnt even tell u. heheh. hayato and i r goin out.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>I gathered that much.  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>we are really happy.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Good for you guys  
><strong>Tsuna: <strong>thx vmuch. :) oh. done printing. c ya bai.  
><strong>Basil: <strong>Adios, bromigo

Tsuna logged out; Basil logged out too and sighed backward into the back of the chair. He never thought Tsuna would swing that way – almost every time they saw each other, Tsuna would talk about Kyoko Sasagawa and how kind she was or how she might look in a wedding dress. Gokudera he didn't know as well, but he had always suspected something deeper in his relationship with Tsuna, at least on his part. Basil and Gokudera had actually met once before Tsuna came into either of their lives. Basil had been hired by a CEDEF/Vongola ally, the Giegue Famiglia, to help out on a massive mission. The Giegue were based in Russia, so that was where he had to go. A close-knit, clan-like band of highly-skilled and prolific killers, the Giegue seemed a strange but cooperative group. All the members dressed for the extreme Russian weather, in furs and thick coats and high boots and scarves and the like, and older, graduated members wore masks while the novices and children were bare-faced, even during their real missions. Hayato Gokudera was approximately Basil's age, a little older maybe, but he had joined the Giegue only recently at the time, so he did not have a mask. It was obvious that Hayato wasn't really Russian, let alone born into the Giegue Famiglia, but he was accepted by all the others regardless – as accepted as a group of skeptical killers could accept him, anyhow. Back then Hayato was reserved, self-reliant, covertly quirky, and anyone could tell from a mere glance at him that he was utterly brilliant, though he tried to keep this gift to just himself. Hayato, Basil and another Giegue boy their age named Timur joined a small group of adults in Siberia for two weeks around Christmastime. Basil interacted with Hayato just as much as he did with all the others, except that about halfway through the trip Hayato had disappeared from the group. Hayato was back at the Giegue HQ when everyone returned, though nobody was allowed to see him because, apparently, he had fallen extremely ill. Basil thought he would never hear from Hayato again, that this one-time run-in was just that, one time – he was wrong, of course.

Basil figured even now Hayato couldn't have changed that much. Tsuna had quite exaggeratedly become his obsession. He did talk more, but he still never actually shared his inner thoughts or feelings, except with a select handful of people he truly trusted, on an issue he felt absolutely necessary to address. He carried a million burdens, and he carried them all by himself, and he carried them without complaint. Yes, he was indeed a strange person, but in an interesting, rather irresistible way. And Basil had confirmed, especially after he worked with Hayato and a few others in the future, that Hayato was extraordinarily smart. Not to mention, Hayato really was a good-looking young man. He figured Hayato would probably be a very good boyfriend. If Basil were so inclined, anyway.

The future CEDEF leader put his hands behind his head and shut his eyes for a couple of minutes, moments of the past and dreams of the future coloring his mind, when he heard the office door open and shut. He sat up and opened his bright blue eyes. Iemitsu had just come in and had his back turned, so quickly Basil exited out of the Internet window.

"How ya doing?" Iemitsu greeted, nodding at his protégé while holding a precariously large pile of papers between his hands and chin. Basil replied to him with a shy smile. Iemitsu slammed the papers onto the desk surface and sighed definitively. He pointed to the massive pile. "Look at this. My own son is drowning me in paperwork."

Basil chuckled at that. He politely stood so his boss could sit in the big leather chair – which was remarkably comfortable – and check his busy email. Iemitsu glanced across the bottom of the screen.

"Oh, you were on Facebook?" _Basil _thought _he had exited out of the window. Why did the minimize and the exit buttons have to be so close together? _Iemitsu laughed a little. "I haven't check my Facebook in forever…" He re-opened the Internet window.

"Actually, I tried getting on there already and the network is down," Basil said.

Iemitsu looked him in the face for a few seconds. "Really?" He shrugged and exited (really exited) the window. "Sucks for them, I guess."

Of all the things Iemitsu had taught Basil over the years, one of the lessons Basil valued the most was how to lie effectively.

**XXXV. You have to be **_that one kid_** who accidentally leaves the hall pass in the bathroom. **

He curled into the fetal position under the blankets. All his muscles cried from the movement, but he figured if he stayed still long enough the pain would subside a little. Drenched in sweat, he exhaled, his breath cooling against the goosebumps covering his skin. He felt clammy and weak. Freezing cold. He could not even attempt to steady the violent tremors constantly pulsating throughout his body. All his digestive organs screamed at him in burning agony.Even the faintest hint of light that snuck through the blankets and the subtle sounds of his own breath and heartbeat pressured his head on all sides, pushing in on him like steel walls and splitting him open from the inside.

It had been quite an adventure for Hayato to get from the bathroom floor to the futon couch/bed in this state. Instead of standing with ease, nudging open the door and walking calmly halfway across the apartment as was normal, he had to clamor onto his feet, grabbing at the shower curtain, the counter, the doorknob which he could barely grasp with his numb fingers. He laid the side of his head against the door, the rest of him following, to achieve balance. The room spun at a million kilometers a second. Everything was dark and spotty and multiplied by two or four or twenty. He subconsciously cursed whoever built this place for making the bathroom door open inward. His torso swung far back, as though he was opening himself along with the door, and he almost collapsed across the threshold. He had no contacts in or glasses on, so he was almost completely sightless, as he felt around for something to guide him a few feet further – a table, a chair, a lamp, anything would do – but, unable to find furniture here, he gave up and crawled until he felt the couch's back leg. Using that to stand, he then flopped down onto the couch. The cushions dislocated but he didn't even care. He covered his entire body with a blanket and, unsatisfied after a minute, grabbed another and piled it on top of him. Hayato shut his eyes, wincing, hoping that he really was as he felt, like nothing more could be vomited out except maybe a _kidney_, hoping he could fall asleep and be fine in a few hours.

Broadcast on the insides of his eyelids, yet another delusion began. Hayato mentally groaned in desperate protest but soon all his conscious thought would drift away again. He could see faces, familiar faces, strange faces, hated faces, with hollow eyes and cruel smiles. The splitting headache slowly ebbed away. The air stilled mild and dry against him. A flash of liquid red. Everything was a little too perfect – everything was fake, and he didn't care, couldn't bring himself to care. In the very back of his mind he knew he was trapped, that he was falling for a trap set up by himself, that he had to get out of here. However, he played into it. He was the fantasy's best player. He was alone with his thoughts and it felt so right but it was so wrong. They were killing him slowly. He didn't feel it at all.

He breathed into it, the sick scene that surrounded him, a raging war inside his head and out. But from the outside slowly seeping in, he sensed a tinny noise. _Wake up, wake up, wake up, warke urp, wrrk rrp, vrr rp, vrr vr, vrr rr, rrr rr, rrrr... _

0o.o0o.o0

Overhead the whitish-silver clouds marched slowly. Takeshi Yamamoto took it all in like his smooth brown eyes were black holes. He checked around him more before deeming it okay to slide his phone out of his pocket. His father was speed dial #2, his mother #3, his house #4, his aunt #5, his baseball coach #6, Tsuna #7 – Gokudera #8. He held in the digit and lifted the speaker to his ear with anxiety.

He waited through a few rings before eventually he got kicked over to voicemail. Gokudera's voice misled him at first. "You've reached _La Casa di Partito_. Sexy fun times for all. Please hope this is the wrong number." _Beep. _Under different circumstances, Yamamoto would have laughed and remembered sometime last February when Gokudera recorded that message, based on an inside joke between the two of them. But he simply sighed, hung up, and dialed again. His heart rate elevated only slightly.

"Pick up the phone, Gokudera," he muttered. He didn't notice how he nervously lowered and raised his heels on and off the concrete.

Finally, on the last possible ring, his friend's voice came over the line, not as a recording. "Hello..." His voice was trembling, quiet, strained, tired. All-around miserable. Yamamoto felt bad for calling him now, but he knew he had to keep him talking.

"Gokudera," Yamamoto said.

"Oh. Yamamoto." A small pause, a shuffling sound. "C-can this wait until later?"

"I was just checking on you," Yamamoto said.

"Why?" Gokudera asked.

"Well, Tsuna and I were worried about you since you didn't show up to school today," Yamamoto explained. "Are you okay?"

Another pause, like he was thinking of a way to respond. "I'm fine. Taking a personal day. I'll be back tomorrow."

Yamamoto frowned tautly and he felt as though Gokudera could probably sense it. "Really? You sure?"

"Yeah," Gokudera said, sighing. "Yeah." It almost sounded like he was saying it more to himself than to his friend.

Yamamoto nodded doubtfully. "Okay..." He swallowed something hard in his throat. He really didn't want to hang up – and he could feel through the phone, he swore, that Gokudera didn't want that either. But Yamamoto looked up at a window on the second floor, where the rest of his class was in the middle of a lesson; down at the hall pass he still held, which he had unknowingly crumpled in his fist.

A tensely hopeful silence stretched over their conversation, at least on Yamamoto's end. He lost track of his mind for a few seconds within the time. He wondered if he had hung up yet. Then he heard Gokudera's voice over the speaker again, a sharp whine, "Yamamoto–?" with an overtone of panic.

"Yes?" Yamamoto said.

Gokudera spent the next minute or so trying to stifle his panting. He sighed into calmness. Yamamoto felt himself go cold. "Gokudera, if you need my help I can find you and come over there, right now. You know I'd do it," he affirmed. He felt like that was all he could say, since it seemed even to him at this point that asking _Are you okay? _repeatedly wouldn't get him anywhere.

"I know," Gokudera wheezed. "D-don't come over. I'm oh–... I'm okay. I'm okay now, thank you." He didn't even know for what Gokudera could have been thanking him, really.

Despondency sinking into his features, Yamamoto kicked the dirt with one foot, watching the little white pebbles scatter and roll, waiting for some sign to neutralize all his fears. No feeling of comfort came to him, though, even at length. He knew he was on speakerphone on the other end of the line. He pondered what to do next while he listened to Gokudera's breathing – it would relax and then quicken, it would hitch every once in a little while, it would turn into a tiny wince or whine on occasion.

"Yamamoto," Gokudera finally said.

"Yes?"

"... Tell... Tell the Tenth I'm... Sorry for missing school today... And not to worry about me." His voice was extremely labored, like his very life flowed in and out of him as did his breaths.

"Of course," Yamamoto said. He glanced up at the window again. He couldn't see any of the people up there but he did see the reflection of the clouds on the tinted pane.

"Thank you," Gokudera whispered, the quiver in his voice so strong it nearly shattered the words. Yamamoto furrowed his brow when he heard Gokudera end the call.

**XXXVI. Selfish human being. **

Well, he wasn't feeling as well as he had hoped he would. He could sense the dissatisfaction the instant his eyes cracked open, and though his headache had temporarily dulled into a cool numbness, his stomach still churned, the pain of it ripping through his whole body. He sat up, the blankets curling around him, and dragged a dreadful slap down the side of his face. The air was abruptly chilly against the now calmed skin on his bare chest, back. He picked his glasses off the coffee table, opened them and slid them on; they felt heavy here on his face; he drew in his surroundings, slowly, deliberately, checking off a list in his head of every little thing in his apartment. In this instant it struck Hayato that he felt profoundly empty, inside and out. Breathing deep a few times did not seem to quell this.

5:50 p.m. exactly. The Tenth should have been home from school by now and free to talk, if not starting a quick dinner. When this thought struck Hayato, he did realize how good it would feel to hug his boyfriend right now. He took a throw pillow from the end of the couch and laid it in his lap and put his arms around it. But it was no substitute.

Uncoiling the blankets from around him, Hayato reached for his Blackberry on the coffee table. He ignored all the missed calls and unread emails and text messages and went straight for Tsunayoshi Sawada's phone number.

"_Tsuna Sawada's personal cell. If you're a friend, leave a message. If you're here for 'clams,' I'm afraid you're looking in the wrong place. Thank you!" _Hayato sighed just as the machine beeped for him to start talking.

"Hey, Tenth," he said, "It's me." He forgot what to say and formulated a new response all at once. "Um, just wanted to check in with you. But you don't have to call me back, really. I'll see you at school tomorrow, I guess... I love you." He hung up.

Hayato relaxed into the couch cushion, slouching far enough for his knees to move the coffee table through the thick gray fabric. The pillow fell to the floor. So did the phone. He gasped and sighed and his whole body inflated and deflated with his bare chest. His eyes closed. He stayed immobile there for what felt like hours. Not cold, not warm; not thinking. Just basking in his inner void.

When the time came that his eyes opened on their own, and he felt himself existing again, he became epiphanically aware of the imbalances within his own body, mind and soul. Only for a moment.

**XXXVII. Fell in line. **

"Tsuna... Tsuna... Tsuna..."

Tsuna's eyes squeezed shut tighter as his face constricted into an unconscious frown.

"Tssssuuuunnaaaaaaaa...~"

He folded his pillow over one ear and rolled onto the other side. His legs thrashed under the blanket. He felt a harsh nudge on his exposed shoulder.

"Tsuna!"

Tsuna flipped onto his back and threw his fists into the mattress. His eyes opened. A huffy pout developed on his face. Lambo leaned over him.

"Get up or you'll be late!" the little boy shouted, and he raced out of the room laughing hysterically.

Tsuna's thin brown eyebrows furrowed. "Wha...?" He turned his head to the side and over the fold of the pillow he saw three red numbers –

"Six fifty-fi–!" Tsuna shot up out of bed, gasping. "Holy–!" His ankle got caught inside the sheet as he tried to step out, causing him to fall flat on his face on the wood floor while his foot was still in the bed. He lifted his head off the floor with his arms in the push-up position. "Son of a..." he groaned. Kicking his foot out of the mess of avalanching sheets and blankets, he clamored to the armoire on the other side of his room. He whipped the top drawer open furiously. Only two pairs of boxers left – _purple or smiley faces?_ He grabbed the purple pair.

He turned to push the drawer shut with his hip while looking at the time on his alarm clock. 5:56. He had no time even to wonder why his alarm didn't go off. He whipped around and opened the middle drawer of the armoire. Right inside, he could see a pair of black trousers, neatly folded, and a clean white shirt, neatly folded. He took them in his fists and they were instantly undone.

At first he stepped one foot into the clean pair of boxers, but then he realized he probably should take off his pajama pants first.

He yanked them down to his ankles, them kicked them and they went flying to the corner. So did the white boxers he had worn to sleep last night in a few seconds. Trying once again to apply his underwear and then pants – _and then _pants, heh heh – he glanced at the time again. 5:57. Growling his foot down the last pant leg, adjusting the waist and zipping and buttoning the pants to security, Tsuna practically threw himself into the shirt. His hands moved up the front of his shirt slowly, clumsily threading all the buttons through their holes.

Tsuna kneed the middle drawer closed and opened the right door of the armoire. He took the tie off the hook on the inside wall. He slid the jacket off the hanger. He shut the door and searched in the top drawer again for a pair of socks.

To put the socks on with as little risk of falling and hurting himself as possible, he sat on the edge of the bed and wrestled them onto his feet, and by the time he had finished this and picked his jacket and tie up again he saw that the clock said _5:58_. Despite the fact that he had failed to wake up to his alarm, he felt pretty pro for being able to get mostly ready in only three minutes.

He slipped a little along the wood floor upon exiting the room, accompanied by a nervous "Who-o-o-oa." But he recovered and rushed into the bathroom to brush his teeth quickly. Then he moved swiftly down the staircase. A room away, the kitchen was bustling with last-minute activity. Tsuna ducked into the one empty chair at the table to a plate with two slices of cooled toast. He greedily shoved it halfway into his mouth.

"Good morning, Tsu-kun," Nana said from the sink. Bianchi, sitting at the opposite side of the table with her nose buried in a tabloid magazine, murmured, "Light-speed, Tsunayoshi."

Out of the corner of his eye, Tsuna saw the clock on the microwave flash 6:00 exactly. Lambo saw it, too, and took his Pokémon backpack off the counter. I-Pin picked up her red messenger bag as well. Fuuta walked between them toward the front of the house.

"Wait!" Tsuna called, mouth full of half-chewed toast. He swallowed everything down forcefully and bit onto the corner of the second slice, though not hard enough to sever it. His jacket and tie had been draped carelessly over the back of his chair; he grabbed them and bounded to catch up to the three little ones.

"Tsuna!" he heard Bianchi yell to him.

He jumped back into the kitchen doorway.

Bianchi's soft green eyes were looking right at him, and he noted in this instant how much she and her brother looked alike. "Your bag," she said, pointing to Tsuna's backpack dangling from the hooks on the wall near the counter.

His eyes widened as he ran to it. He grabbed it off the hook, unzipped the largest compartment, (sloppily) folded his tie and jacket and shoved them into the bag, and sealed it back up and slid his arms through the straps. He waved to her as he left – he would have said "thank you" but he still had the toast in his mouth.

Lambo, I-Pin and Fuuta had not even made it far beyond the front lawn before Tsuna caught up to them, after struggling to put on his shoes. And the four of them hadn't even turned the corner when they were met with a few of their friends.

Ryohei looked pretty flustered in his wrinkled clothes. Kyoko, Hana and Chrome gave Tsuna a quick, pleasant hello before continuing their three-way conversation. Yamamoto stayed back to talk to Tsuna. The kids went on ahead, playing tag while walking in the center of the mass.

"I really need to pee," Tsuna said to start. He tucked his shirt into his pants by smoothing out the hem with his hand, all the way around.

Yamamoto chuckled. "Nice. Didn't you go before you left?"

"No," Tsuna replied. "I didn't get the chance. I woke up late and I was in such a hurry that I never realized how much I really _painfully _need to pee."

"I see you also forgot your jacket and tie," Yamamoto said, looking Tsuna up and down.

"They're in my backpack. I'll be able to get ready a little at school," Tsuna explained.

Yamamoto just smiled and shook his head. "We're such close friends, it's awkward sometimes."

"Speaking of awkward close friends," Tsuna said, "Do you think Hayato's coming to school today?"

"I hope so," Yamamoto said. _I'm really worried about him. _"There's that lab experiment we have to do in science class today in groups of three."

_I miss him; I hope he's okay. _"Yeah," Tsuna said.

The boys looked into the migrating clouds above them, the silence between them growing tenser by the minute. They both thought of Hayato Gokudera and wondered wildly where he was right now.

0o.o0o.o0

The cut had been shallow enough to heal up on its own; but the sense of panic had not entirely dissolved. Hayato sat up, rubbed his eye (getting a little blood on his cheek), put on his glasses, stood from his couch bed, and set up his e-cig over by the counter. As soon as he took in just one drag of vapor, he felt relaxed, and his profound hunger calmed itself down to a tolerable pang.

Once he seemed okay, he walked lazily into the bathroom, mindlessly started the shower running, and turned to look at his face in the mirror. For a fraction of a second he swore he saw someone else's face regarding him – he didn't know whom, but he was so startled he was thrown into a powerful coughing fit. By the end of it he looked down at the palm he had instinctively used to cover his mouth, and there was blood all over it, from the slit wrist, from the internal bleeding he knew he had in one of his lungs.

He released a shaky sigh. Then he dared to look at himself again. There he was: limp gray hair, green eyes framed by dark circles, his dead mother's nose. His chest felt weighed-down by some stinging burden. Hayato extended a shaking hand to the handle and opened the medicine cabinet. He grabbed for the Sun Ring on the bottom shelf, as he had done before, and used it, figuring there was no harm in speeding up the process. After putting the ring away, he took his contact case off the bottom shelf next to the ring holder and put in his contacts, one after the other, blinking them into place, laying his glasses now folded inside the cabinet so they would not get all fogged up.

Quickly he relieved his bladder, noting that he probably should clean the toilet later today since he had such a fun time vomiting violently into it yesterday. Afterward, feeling the mist permeate the entire apartment, he lifted his shirt off, shed his sweatpants, his boxers. He threw all the clothes on the floor in the doorway and stepped into the tile shower and yanked the shower curtain closed. The water was steaming. It rushed at him hard. It felt so good against his skin, he raised his head and let it cascade down the front of him, holding his arms up and his chest out, and the drain gargled the watered-down blood. He breathed the thick air in deep. He ducked his head under the water and shut his eyes, creating a mask of water over his face – his intentions purified, his mind cleared, until he stood up straight again and sighed the water out of his mouth.

He picked the soap up off the dish, lathered it on a cloth, and traced from his shoulder to his elbow to his wrist, then the other side. He always started with his arms. It wasn't a purposeful thing. That was just where his hand went first with the soap. Maybe subconsciously he was trying to erase all the lines dripping and crisscrossing and running down the undersides of his forearms.

(Next around the back of his neck, where the Vongola Seal had been printed on his skin for almost four years. He was proud of it, but he usually covered it anyway. Lately he had been careless with it since his hair had grown out a little, and really, who would pay that much attention to the back of his head? It may have been a habitual thing, or maybe that Nami Middle did not approve of tattoos on students, and what kind of impression would he leave on people if they saw all his tattoos – he didn't want to be looked down upon and thus shame the Tenth and the Vongola.)

Hayato finished washing the rest of his body, and washed his hair too, but he just stood there still and let the water rain down on him for at least as long, until it got so cold he couldn't stand it, and had to turn it off. He gasped in the courage to peel back the curtain and step out into the bathroom naked and dripping and shivering. He tore the maroon towel off the bar on the wall and snaked it all around him; then, satisfied he was dry, he wrapped it high around his hips.

His face in the mirror didn't look any better – it looked more awake, but not any _better_. The pain on the inside of it, however, could at least be repressed, so he knew he was going to school today.

He took the comb out of the medicine cabinet and skimmed it through his hair while it still had some traces of wetness. Raked the comb's edge down the middle of his scalp in a straight line for the part. Back to replacing it in the cabinet: next to it was simple foundation, mineral makeup that matched his skin tone very nicely, that had been "given" to him by some of the kids in the school's theatre club. He took it out along with the brush and carefully blended it over the deep blue shadows around his eyes. He didn't think it was wrong that he, a boy, wore makeup. It wasn't much, or really noticeable; he didn't wear it for enjoyment; he wore it because he didn't want anyone to see the gigantic, pronounced bags under his eyes and worry about him.

He examined his face in the mirror closely, sure that he looked normal from all angles and in all lighting. He put up the makeup and took out his toothbrush and toothpaste. It was a fairly new toothbrush but it was already a little worn and frayed. With a gratuitous amount of toothpaste, he scrubbed his entire mouth thoroughly to get the musty taste of tobacco-flavored vapor and the light leftover twinge of bile out as best he could. By the time he spat into the sink, for a minute, the whole world was mint. He laughed breathily at his reflection. He looked refreshed, flawless, with his neat hair and his perky pale skin and the white teeth beneath his smile. If his head weren't swimming, and he didn't feel all tight in the stomach, and he had no dizziness or fatigue, he would have thought he was doing great. Whoever came up with the idea of reflective glass must have been some sort of hypocrite – or perhaps a genius.

Finally he trotted out of the bathroom to the dresser in another corner where he kept most of his clothes. The top drawer had a few sets of the same uniform. Hayato really hated the uniform he had to wear during his first year at Nami Middle: the colors were awful, and they looked even worse on him than they did alone; the ugly uniform gave him even more of a reason to dislike school. Last year's uniform, for eighth graders, wasn't all that bad though. It was more professional-looking, and in his opinion, the navy blue suited him. Third-year uniforms were the best. He practiced smiling as he put on his boxers, shed the towel, slid on the black slacks, and wound a black leather belt around his waist. Pushed his arms through the sleeves of the prim white dress shirt and buttoned it from bottom to top. Some students, like Hibari and the Tenth, tucked their shirts into their pants, but Hayato didn't really care for that – doing so felt uncomfortable to him. Then he popped the collar, slung the red tie around his neck, and tied it perfectly without guidance from a mirror. He grabbed the black jacket and black socks, but instead of putting them on right away, he slung them over the back of the couch.

He moved on to his favorite part of his morning routine. Jewelry. _Oh yes_. He opened the overflowing jewelry armoire at the bathroom door to earrings, bracelets, necklaces. Rolling up his sleeve, he latched on a thick wristband with a buckle, a thin leather band with studs, and a silver bangle, all on his right arm only. The crucifix necklace he chose became immediately hidden under his shirt collar. He filled in all three of his regular ear piercings, and all three cartilage piercings on his right ear, with sterling silver and diamonds. The rings he kept in the medicine cabinet, and he put them on and they felt almost like redemption. The Storm Vongola ring, wrapped around his left middle finger. The Uri ring, with its perpetual roar and gleaming red gems for eyes. The most precious ring of all, silver and gold dancing around each other to meet at the top and cradle a pure half-carat diamond. This was a women's ring, but he didn't care. He had held onto it, all these years, like his life depended on it, for a reason. (And then he added one or two other rings, just because he wanted to, really.)

Followed immediately by his favorite part of early morning was his least favorite – well, tied for least favorite with waking up. He walked to the other end of his apartment, took a plastic cup out of the drawer, filled the cup with water from the kitchen sink, and set it down beside the faucet. Now it was time to address all those pill bottles on the top shelf of the one floating cupboard.

_These red and white ones were for his heart. Take one pink one twice a day for stomach problems. More heart pills, the blue ones, which could be fatal with any alcohol. These here for headaches. Long white acetaminophen tablets. Two others, circular, that were technically chewable but tasted awful. Little ones that rolled along the curves of his palm. Big ones that might make him choke. Sticky, smooth; in ones, twos, threes. _

He swallowed them all down in three or four rounds, drinking the cup dry. He sighed, sitting on the couch to pull on his socks, then slipping into his shoes. The jacket sleeve rode over all the wrist adornments. He cuffed it so the accessories would be visible, but his entire arm and his wrist were completely covered.

Hayato lifted his backpack off the coffee table and slung it over one shoulder. The photograph of the Tenth on the end table glared at him in that moment.

Smiling gently, he picked it up, stroked the side of the Tenth's head with his thumb, whispered, "I'll be seeing you today," and kissed the picture softly. He set the framed photo down without a noise and started out the door.

"You are the only thing that keeps me going."

**XXXVIII. "Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be." - Sigmund Freud. **

The students walked with a headwind splashing moderately warm air in their faces. They were only about halfway to school, making decent time. Lambo and I-Pin were so proud to tote backpacks alongside their older friends. Ryohei, in high school now, would jog ahead of the pack until he hit an intersection and wait for everyone to catch up. Of course, they were moving slowly, even by the standards of a normal morning.

The group had come to a snail's pace when Tsuna heard a beloved voice. It was subdued and meek, pleasant, stiff, but quite obviously overjoyed.

"Good morning, Tenth," Gokudera said, smiling timidly into the bright new sun. He had one hand on his backpack strap, but when Tsuna turned around and saw him, and beamed and excitedly shouted, "Hayato!" and started towards him, he let go and outstretched his arms. The boys embraced each other. Everyone noticed from their overflowing auras, and a few looked at them while most just continued their slow-walking and talking.

Hayato squeezed Tsuna's body tightly to him. He held his boyfriend's shirttails in his fists. This hug felt like a particularly necessary and passionate one; Hayato, it seemed, was holding onto him like a drowning man to a lifesaver. Tsuna didn't complain, however. He took in the ecstasy of Hayato's scent. Early in the morning it was so fresh and clean, and it gave him more energy than any cup of coffee would.

The boys kissed briefly on the lips, then Hayato fervently kissed Tsuna's forehead as well; they broke off the hug, and held hands down the road, at the back of the group. Tsuna wanted to rain questions down on Hayato – a torrential downpour of an interrogation. _Where were you yesterday? What were you doing? Are you okay now?_ But in this moment he could not find any words to go between them. He was satisfied with simply holding the other boy's hand, knowing that in any events, unfortunate or mysterious or whatever else, Hayato would still be there, following wholeheartedly and loving unconditionally.

Kyoko and Chrome fell behind the rest of the group to get close to Tsuna. "Tsuna-kun," Kyoko said, "Do you want to see what Chrome-chan and I have made for the Korean History project?"

"Sure," Tsuna said. He and Hayato looked at each other with sweet, understanding smiles before their hands came apart and Tsuna followed the girls a little further ahead to see their heavily-decorated trifold. Meanwhile, Yamamoto slowed until he was beside his silver-haired bomber friend.

"Hey, why were you gone yesterday, really?" he asked.

Gokudera shrugged. "I just wanted to hang out at home," he replied. Yamamoto didn't believe him, but he smirked in acceptance of this answer anyway.

"How are you feeling?" He tried rephrasing it.

_Nauseous. Dizzy. Faint. Tired as fuck. Depressed. Lonely. Lost. Sore all over. Desperate. Weak. My head is pounding. My chest hurts. Starving. Downright sick. I want to go home. _"Fine," Gokudera said. He hitched his backpack a little further up his shoulder. Then, rather casually, "I didn't eat anything yesterday, at all, all day."

"Man!" Yamamoto said. "How did you pull that off? I can't even go three hours without eating something." Gokudera merely shrugged again. "In any case..." Yamamoto trailed off as he dug around blindly in his bag behind his back until he came up with a granola bar and tried handing it to his friend.

Gokudera put his hand up and shook his head. "No, thanks," he said. "My appetite is nonexistent right now."

"Take it anyway," Yamamoto said. When Gokudera rejected it a second time, Yamamoto ended up shoving it in one of Gokudera's backpack's outer pockets.

"Well, you know," Yamamoto began when he reached his friend's side a second time, "If you want to talk, Gokudera. If anything is wrong. If you need something, anything, you can definitely call me."

Gokudera just eyed him like he was crazy. Yamamoto had learned a long time ago how to remain unaffected by his friend's, the King of Dirty Looks', meaner expressions.

"I'm serious," Yamamoto said. "I'm your best friend, man. I'm here for you."

"Hmph." Gokudera jumped the backpack strap further up his shoulder again and focused his eyes straight forward, on the back of the Tenth's adorable head.

Yamamoto looked down at his friend's face. He realized how very pale Gokudera's skin was, how gaunt and drained he looked, how his gray-green eyes were so sunken and brooding. The boy had a slender neck, gossamer hair and quavering hands. Yamamoto wondered if these things were just recent changes in Gokudera after what he suspected was a sick day; if he was just imagining them; or if Gokudera had really been this fragile all along.

**XXXIX. Strong ties. **

Unlike his boyfriend, Tsuna did not have the ability to perfectly apply a necktie without looking in a mirror.

He had already tried three times at this endeavor. From this angle, his hands couldn't do anything right. Standing amongst his male friends and peers, he turned to the one to whom he was closest.

"Hayato," he said, "Could you…?" He held the ends of his droopy tie in his hands. "Please?"

Hayato nodded pleasantly and said, "Of course, Tenth."

He took the wide end in his left hand and the thin one in his right and began to wrap one side around the other.

Tsuna found himself staring down at Hayato's hands. The fingers moved swiftly and surely, and they had many rings around the bases – he remembered when Hayato bought one of them at an open-air art show a few months back.

It didn't take long for Hayato to finish, bringing the knot up to the shirt collar. "Is it too tight, Tenth?" he asked.

Brown eyes and met with green. Tsuna smiled up at Hayato's face. "No, it's perfect," he said, "Thank you."

**XL. He loves watching storms, indeed. **

Tonight they were glad the weatherman had been wrong.

The boys sat on the floor just inside the sliding glass door to the porch, the blinds open before them. Lights were off far throughout the house. It may have been only about nine o'clock, but outside it was dark enough to be mistaken for midnight or later. Inside, Tsuna leaned heavily on his boyfriend's side, arms around his torso. Hayato had his left arm around the Tenth's upper back. They stared out at the pouring rain. Every once in a little while, the sky lit up and the day would come for a split second. The entire world around them would shake, making the boys grab each other tighter.

They breathed in their sweet scents. Their skin tingled with every little drop that hit the pane. While they sat, where they sat, there was nothing else in the world but the two of them, and the soft noises of their breathing and the tapping of the water, letting the booming thunder carry them off to rapture.

It was a little past one in the morning before the rain stopped. Reluctantly the boys stood up and walked to the front door hand-in-hand. Hayato slid on his shoes and took his backpack. Tsuna offered him an umbrella, in case the rain decided to turn around and hit Namimori again. Hayato opened the door, letting the post-rain mist flood into the foyer. The boys exchanged a long goodbye kiss. When they came apart, they wanted more, but they knew they couldn't do so all night. Tsuna stood in the doorway to watch Hayato walk across the puddles in the sidewalk, until he had disappeared into the thick night.

**A few author's notes: **

**1: I'm really glad I got to include Basil in this chapter. He does not get enough love. **

**2: I actually don't even have a Facebook account. I had to research that whole Facebook scene. It's probably a little inaccurate. If so, please let me know and tell me how it really is, and I will fix it and credit you. **

**3: You read right. This chapter is the start of a very dark and serious turn. Drama is about to go down, you guys. **

**4: None of this is meant to imply serious 8059 in any way **––** their friendship will become much stronger over the next few chapters, but they're in no way romantic.**

**5: There sure is a lot of phone usage in this chapter, isn't there…? Heheh. **

**6: I feel like I'm not very clear conveying the timeline of this. So, to clarify: the first date was on Saturday, April 15. The second date, Wednesday, April 18. Their sixth date/first kiss was on May 4, Greenery Day. Their first day back at school was Monday, May 7, but Gokudera didn't show up until the following day, Tuesday, May 8, the date on which this chapter ends. Just wanted to be super clear. ^^ **

**7: These chapters are getting really long. **

**8: This author's note is getting really long. **


	5. If I take my eye

**Valentine's Day post! Woot~! Though this update is a little more angsty than normal. Sorry. **

**More confusion on the timeline. The first date was on April 14, not 15, sorry. The 15 was a Sunday. XD I fail. Whoops. **

**Anyway. To all readers: thank you (: ACTUAL PLOT AND NOT JUST EPISODIC FLUFF! Oh, the drama. Wait until y'all see what I have in store… **

**Chapter Five: ****If I take my eye off you… **

**XLI. Stare. **

The Vongola Boss moved through his busy life with confidence and grace. He looked equally as charming in a designer suit as in peasant apparel. His voice firmed for every command. His eyes preached a certain optimism as they would dance around the room. In the tiniest of moments, a smile graced his face, and thus graced the world. The light from within him breathed in everyone. Blessings came from his mere presence. Unfailingly he opened his arms and his heart to all the helpless souls, and administered justice to the disturbed ones. That was the pure way of the Vongola. Even in chaos, he maintained perfection.

The Vongola's Right-Hand was the perpetual white shadow at his boss' side. He performed each duty so much as halfheartedly suggested to him with vigor and skill. Untiring, he worked into late hours, so that his comrades could have easy lives, and all his boss' loose ends could be tied up. Every problem that arose, he took it on with an unmatched level of wit. He was a one-man army. He was capable of nearly anything, and would not stop until he was forced to do so, and always had the same goal in the end: to return to the love of his boss. The genuine passion for the Vongola Tenth as a person, as the only person who mattered in his life, in any sense.

So while the Vongola went throughout his day, facing school, work and home all together, the Right-Hand could not stop staring at him. He was thoroughly taken by the other's utter beauty. And after a moment of watching that brown head maneuver amongst the crowds or gazing into those infinite portals called eyes, he would find himself unable to even move.

Whether he noticed or not, the Rain Guardian occasionally glanced over at the Right-Hand. Across the room, over his shoulder; little subconscious checkpoints. But he did not know what went on inside that Right-Hand man's head – if he knew he would have gone crazy.  
>Instead he just forced himself<br>to quietly stand by  
>and wonder,<br>for whose sake  
>was all this concern,<br>anyway.

**XLII. Hitting the showers, sort of. **

PE had been rigorous: the school had a new coach and wanted to break him in, except he ended up breaking the _students_ in. After forcing all of Nami Middle's ninth graders through 50 pushups, 50 crunches, seven laps around the track, and many advanced yoga stretches (none of these activities was much of a problem for students like Yamamoto and Gokudera – in fact, the two boys made a friendly competition out of them – but Tsuna and Enma did a lot of complaining), he took a break in his office while his students shuffled exhaustedly into the respective locker rooms. The whole place smelled of sweat and misery, and quickly it was filled with chattering between panting breaths, locker doors slamming, and shower curtains rings grinding across metal bars.

Tsuna sat on the end of a bench with one leg on each side. "Oh, God… this is… torture… do you think… we can get… the new coach… fired? I don't… want to have to… do this every day…." He groaned loudly. "I can't feel my legs… or my arms… or my anything…." Enma sat behind Tsuna, straddling the bench as well, and both petite boys collapsed, their backs against one another, trying to catch their breaths.

"I don't know, I kind of like him," Yamamoto said with a laugh. "He might just help me improve my baseball form."

"Is that all you ever think about, Yamamoto?" Enma said under his breath.

Gokudera stood as straight as he could next to his tall baseball-er friend, but he felt particularly light-headed. He tried his best to keep quiet, steady his breathing, and not look washed out or like the room was spinning a hundred miles an hour all around him. Yamamoto didn't seem affected at all by this intense exercise. Gokudera would not lose to him, dammit.

But with the warm front that had swept into town the day before, quite overtly with a wicked thunderstorm, they held physical education class in an outrageously high temperature. A few of the boys, Yamamoto one of them, had even taken off their shirts, which made the girls of the class quite happy. Otherwise, pretty much everyone was in shorts and a T-shirt. Everyone except Gokudera: he was wearing a jacket and sweatpants. Between the warm weather and the intense exercise and the constant headache and the lack of sleep and the clothes fit for winter, Gokudera was in rather bad sorts.

Yamamoto glanced over his shoulder to the tiled area of the locker room. "We should probably get in line for the showers," he said. "It'll get long soon. At least we have lunch hour next so we're in no rush."

"You're right." Tsuna and Enma dismounted the bench, at length, and dragged themselves to their lockers in the next aisle over. Yamamoto nodded at his silver-haired friend and gave him an awkward smile, barely returned; then he headed toward his locker down at the baseball team's section.

Sighing, Gokudera too traipsed on to his own locker. He turned the dial to his combination, pulled it open, and inside his backpack blocked everything else. He pulled it out of the locker, careful not to accidentally tear any of the pins off the front.

"So, you _didn't _'lose your uniform.'" Gokudera whirled around to a curious Yamamoto.

"Erm, well, yeah, it's my spare," Gokudera replied. A little too quickly. He turned back to face his locker again.

Yamamoto secretly gritted his teeth a little beneath that fake smile. "Then why didn't you dress out? That's what spares are for, right? You've got to be miserably hot in that thing," he said.

"I'm perfectly fine," Gokudera said defensively. A pause, and he looked Yamamoto dead in the eye, a cynical expression tugging at the edges of his mouth. "Don't you have a line to get in?"

Those gray-green eyes were so complex. On the outside they were hard, focused, hot-tempered; but on the inside they were sad, desperate, lost. They seemed to go on infinitely as reflective pools of their owner himself.

Yamamoto grimaced, but alas he nodded and carried on to the back of the line. Shortly thereafter, as most of the boys in the locker room had now finished at their lockers and were crowding into a line for the showers, Tsuna emerged by himself from behind a row of lockers and approached his boyfriend. He carried his uniform neatly folded in his arms.

"Tenth," Hayato said. "I think I'm gonna shower once most of this place is cleared out."

"Really? That'll take a while. Everyone is showering today," the Tenth said.

"I'll just be a little late to lunch," Hayato replied.

Tsuna nodded reluctantly. "All right, then," he said. He threw quick glances in all the general directions to make sure no one would see him lean forward to peck his right-hand man on the lips.

"See you, I guess," Tsuna said, walking away.

_Yeah. See you. _Hayato smiled gently to his boss' back as though his headache were insignificant. Then he put his attention on the locker again, reaching in for his neatly folded uniform and the Blackberry tucked inside it.

He would spend the next several minutes sitting alone on the bench in front of his locker, busying himself by scrolling through emails on his cell phone. All because, well.

The other night, he used his bathroom scale for the first time in a long time. He weighed only 52 kilograms. He had researched that the target for his age and height was 63 kg or so – a little high, but with muscle, he used to be at about that weight, healthy. Hayato knew it was getting bad, especially since he knew he would rather eat nothing at all than eat something and inevitably throw most of it up later – but the measurement had shocked him, regardless. He had never thought it would be that bad. It wasn't his fault that he couldn't keep his food down. He couldn't control it, right? The only thing he could control was how he went about the weight loss. Curious after he stepped off the scale and pondered the number, he had taken off his shirt and he realized he had never looked at himself that closely below the neck, but now all his ribs and vertebrae protruded very much, and his stomach caved below his ribcage, and his arms were nearly bone-thin and covered in scars anyhow. There was only so much muscle could do – nothing could mask this drastically low weight.

He figured he could keep his friends from worrying about him by preventing them from seeing his condition. He could keep them in ignorance by covering himself up, wearing loose-fitting clothing with long sleeves. Over the past few months, his jacket collection had become his best friend.

That damn Baseball Idiot was ruining his plan.

**XLIII. On death and dying. **

May 9 brought warming air that seemed to move by itself, and it carried everyone along on its currents, outside the windows of the Sawada house. Half-done homework lay scattered on the small table in Tsuna's bedroom. It was just the two boys in here, one way they liked it. They distracted each other with their mere presence and they didn't even care. Tsuna sat on the edge of his bed; Hayato on his back on the bed, hair sprawled out under his head like a silver halo, grazing the side of Tsuna's leg.

They lounged here for some time, simply talking about empty things, like how hard that new coach had worked them earlier that day.

Then Hayato said, out of the blue: "Tenth… What is it like to die?"

He was immediately struck by this question. A cold feeling moved through him. He looked down at his boyfriend's face, the solemn gray eyes, his pale skin draped over fragile desperation, like the question had just come to mind and it near drained the life out of him to say it out loud.

Tsuna took a deep, silent breath, and let it out slowly. He couldn't look at that face anymore. Not with that heartbreaking _fear_ in it. So he looked straight forward again, finding a spot on the wall and counting the paint bubbles on it from afar, as though he could see them, as though they really mattered.

"Ah…" He thought of a way to describe his thoughts. He blinked robotically.

"Well," he said in a voice that had quieted from mounting some mental obstacle, "I don't know how it is for other people. But every time I've died, it's been from a bullet to the brain. The first time it really surprised me. Every time, actually.

"In that one second – that split second that you have before it goes in, you can see it, you can hear it, you can feel it. Everything starts moving very slowly. It's like the bullet is running along a timeline of your life. And it's hot and it's high-pitched and – and. You're more worried than you've ever been before. Something about this is different from everything else, because suddenly, you _care_. There's no wonder of what's going to happen to you once you die, or to your family or friends or anything. You just see your life. That's all you can see. That's all there is. You don't think about the future because you know there is no future you can control at this point. You think about your life and what you have and have not done, and worry: was it meaningful? Have I _lived_?

"When the bullet goes in it stings. Really bad. Your skull shatters and it's the worst pain you've ever had. All that lasts only a second, though – not even a second, actually. Not even a snap or anything. It feels like forever and an instant at the same time.

"And then you… die. You just die. That's it. It's hard to describe how much like nothing it feels because when you're alive you might think sometimes that you don't feel anything, but you've never felt true nothingness until you die. That's real nothing. It doesn't feel good, but it doesn't feel bad – it doesn't feel like anything except _you're dead_. There are no words for it, I think.

"I guess it's not the death itself that hurts, but the cause of death, the dying, that everyone's so afraid of. If they're afraid of death at all. Some people say they aren't but I think everyone is at least a little. Even now, though I know what it's like and I'm okay with it and I have died many times, I still get scared. At least my deaths have not been as bad. I can't imagine what it's like for some other people, people who die from bludgeoning and being burned alive and stuff. That would be just horrible. I'm lucky that I never had to die that way. I'm also lucky I was never dead for more than a few seconds at a time. You would think it's relieving, or something, but it didn't seem that way to me. Having no feeling for the rest of eternity sounds kind of boring. But I suppose if there really is nothing, you don't get bored. Boredom wouldn't exist anymore.

"So… I've never really thought about it before. Not everyone can say truthfully that they've died. It's a sort of opportunity, a privilege, I guess. I don't feel any different from everyone else, who's only ever known living, though. That's probably because I came back. That's all that matters in the end."

Finally he looked back down at his boyfriend. Tsuna couldn't identify his expression. Maybe Hayato was upset at this revelation on death. Maybe he had found a new way to think of his boss, some way that changed everything. Maybe he was satisfied with the answer and was thinking on it. Maybe he had just listened to every word from that sweet voice, formulating each individual meaning on its own, still trying to string it all together in some logical way. Tsuna knew that no matter what he said he wouldn't offend Hayato. Of course he was interested in Hayato's reaction, but even more so, he wondered what had prompted such a question.

Hayato blinked and met eyes with his boyfriend. Tsuna's skin had paled, and stress weighed down noticeably on his chest, and he could tell Tsuna felt tight and exposed and a little sad. But his eyes betrayed him. They seemed bright as always. Optimistic. Warm. Beautiful. Like he had always known them to be.

Perhaps that was why Tsuna was the way he was. He seized the day. He took the risks. He appreciated every moment, every thing in his life, even what went wrong, even things that by nature he should have hated. Hayato knew this mentality had a profound presence in Tsuna. The experience of dying had to be where it came from. Hayato had never known Tsuna before the latter had died once before – he figured all it took was once. And Tsuna had died in front of Hayato multiple times, and before this moment he had never really considered the abnormality of it all. He could only wonder what Tsuna was like before he died. Before he had been thrust into all this mafia mess. Before he had met him.

"I have a question for you, then," Tsuna said. Hayato stirred to show his preparedness for whatever it was. Tsuna looked even more uncomfortable.

Just like the double standard he practiced in his own life, Tsuna knew that there had to be two sides to Hayato Gokudera. There was the Hayato Gokudera who Tsuna saw on a regular basis: thoughtful, earnest, romantic, passionate, protective, affectionate, sensitive, _utterly amazing_. And then there was the Hayato Gokudera who the rest of the world knew, and Tsuna didn't, and never would. He liked to think that the side he experienced was the _in_-side, Hayato's true self. Sometimes, he was left to wonder at that. Doubts would grow in his mind like little mushrooms, putting Hayato's genuineness to the test, and he would sweat and worry and start to feel his insides disintegrate – and then. He would hear his voice. Look into his eyes. Feel Hayato's hand around his own. Breathe him in. And be sure again that this was indeed the young man he loved.

"What is it like to kill someone by your own hand?" Tsuna asked.

Hayato furrowed his eyebrows in thought. His eyes zoned out to the ceiling above the Tenth. He got the sudden sensation that he was bleeding from the back of the head, but he knew better.

"I take no pride in it," he answered. "I'm no psychopath." He sat up, at length, his clavicle bulging and his palms pressed into the mattress behind him. "I just did what I had to do to survive."

Tsuna's head ducked to show he was listening intently to his hitman boyfriend's words. He turned slightly as Hayato situated himself into a comfortable sitting position before continuing.

"What I've done, it's all that makes sense to me. Mafia life is the only life I've ever known. There was no other option than to make a living the way I did. It took me a little longer to grow that mental callous than it takes for most other people – maybe that was a sign I wasn't cut out for that sort of thing, but what did I know? I spent years on the streets, having to fend for myself. I couldn't just wait around for some miracle. I had to work for my prosperity. And that was the work that was thrown in front of me, and I picked it up because I recognized it.

"Some people say killing is an art. That it's noble. I never thought so. All that mattered to me was the protection provided by the people who hired me and that I could have money for food. It was all about self preservation, and because of that – because I was able to live, I can't say I regret it. I feel sorry for all those people I've taken out. Sometimes the shame overwhelms me. But I don't regret a thing. Without all that experience, I would be nowhere near where I am today."

Tsuna felt fulfilled and confused all at once. He had never asked of the feelings of a killer before because he had always had some sort of contempt toward, detachment from them. This boy to whom he was so close, however, was one of those killers. To know that the killer who mattered the most to him had an opinion about the cursed business made him feel a little better all around. Despite that, he was now faced with even more questions. He didn't know what Hayato was talking about, being 'on the streets.' He wondered if there was something important in Hayato's past that he didn't know – well, really, he didn't wonder – he knew there had to be things he had not learned yet. So quietly he thought about how life could have been for Hayato in his vagrant days.

Hayato felt uneasy about what he had said. Like maybe he just made the wrong impression. He looked around the room once, chewing his lip, then said, "Did you know my first kill was an accident?" _It was a true statement; even so, it didn't make him feel any better. _

"Really?" Tsuna said.

Hayato nodded. "I had been hired to steal a diamond from a building. The boss who hired me had given me a gun that I thought I wouldn't use but took anyway. Turned out, it was a glock – which doesn't have a safety – and it was loaded. I didn't know that though. Well, on my way out of the building, a guard approached me. He grabbed me. And the gun went off by itself. And the next thing I knew, I turned around and there was the guard, frozen on the ground, in a pool of blood, with a big hole right through his chest.

"He had brown eyes. When I think about the incident, the first thing I picture is his lightless brown eyes." He paused, letting the image take hold of him for a minute; all the color in his face washed out, then slowly came back, so he could be conscious again.

"Anyway, as soon as I realized what I had done, I ran like hell away from there, back to the place where that boss and I were supposed to meet after the heist. I would give him the diamond and he would give me the money. I got the money and he got the diamond in the end. But he got mad at me because the meeting spot was a bar he owned and I got blood everywhere. The bullet had grazed my leg. There was blood all over the rest of me, too – the guard's blood. I didn't notice either of those things until he pointed them out to me. I was too numb from what had transpired."

Tsuna let a ponderous breath leak out of him. "Wow," he said. He closely observed Hayato's face. The latter was in a trance of rueful evocation. Somehow he looked just as ashamed and scared as Tsuna thought he would have when the event actually took place all that time ago. Hayato couldn't look Tsuna in the eye quite straight.

He could tell, from the shaking in Hayato's voice when he talked about his first victim's eyes, and how clammy Hayato's hand was when Tsuna placed his own overtop of it, that this one experience had broken Hayato in some irreparable way. Tsuna squeezed Hayato's hand. It didn't seem to help. Hayato just sat there, staring dead ahead, in the start of a cold sweat, trembling slightly. And he continued to talk. "My second kill wasn't an accident.

"I was working with a different boss, and I was supposed to be just his errand boy. That was all we had agreed upon. That was all we had agreed upon, I told him that was all I wanted. I just wanted a break. I was just an errand boy. That was what I wanted. A break for a while.

"He had kidnapped a debtor and was keeping him in the back room of an abandoned bookstore. I knew, but I had nothing to do with it, so I tried to put it out of my mind. Kidnappings and stuff like that happened all the time anyway. But that man he kidnapped threatened to leak all this family's secrets to another organization. The boss knew the man had connections, that he would do it, so he had to be taken out.

"I was just supposed to be an errand boy. I came back to the base to deliver a package and he pulled me aside and gave me a gun and – told me to 'take care of some business in the back room, I'll pay you extra for it.'

"So I went in there and he was strapped to a chair facing away from the door. I had come in so quietly – I didn't make a noise – I just stood there with the gun aimed at the guy's head – and I stood there in the doorway – for the longest time – completely as quiet as I could be.

"If I wanted to, I could have freed him, or just run away, or something. I didn't have to do it. He didn't know I was in there, he was unconscious and it was just the two of us. And the boss wouldn't miss me; he could find another errand boy, easy.

"I pulled the trigger, and that was the end of him. When I came back out of the room, I set the gun on the boss' desk, and he smiled down at me and said, 'Good job, Mark.' My name was Mark, to him, at the time. Then he gave me a _strawberry_ lollipop. Like I was a small child. I didn't care, I took it anyway, because it was free food and, you know, why not? The boss gave Mark a fucking lollipop. Who did he think I was?"

He shook his head, closing his eyes for a second. "Ever since then, the taste of strawberries has made me so sick. I can't smell them too long either without wanting to just die. I can't eat anything strawberry anymore, natural or artificial, the actual thing or any strawberry sauce or candy or anything. To me it's the fruit of death." He gave a short, nervous chuckle at the end of that sentence, and it made him sound a little insane.

A chilled pocket of air remained suspended in Tsuna's throat. He watched the way the veins in Hayato's forehead tensed as his teeth clenched hard.

This boy, this killer was no monster. This was his Hayato. It made him sad. He was no innocent. He had done things that no person should have ever done, but Tsuna did not love him any less for it.

He leaned softly on Hayato's side, slipping his warm hand over Hayato's ice-cold knuckles. His chest feeling heavy, he tried to warm his boyfriend, get him back to the present, to reality. Tsuna kissed him on the cheek, long and slow and sympathetic. He slipped his hand palm-up under Hayato's, meshed their fingers together. Hayato began to sink back into the mattress again, releasing the rigid grip he just now realized he was keeping on the edge of the bed…

**XLIV. "I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life." - Jean Giraudoux. **

Yamamoto frowned at the ceiling fan above him. It rocked back and forth as it spun, making an incessant clicking noise that he could hardly fall asleep without nowadays.

He looked to his right and there was the window. Under it, the autographed baseballs in plastic cases, his favorite old bat, winning trophies, binders and binders full of rare baseball cards, all displayed shrine-like on a set of shelves against the wall.

Among these things were photographs of his family, his friends, from past and present. Well, baseball (and swordsmanship) couldn't have been the only thing he loved, right?

He saw some of the pictures and relived the precious moments. The first team he was ever on, he was five, and he sat in a semicircular booth with them and dined on deep-dish pizza after every game. He stayed with that team all through elementary school. Most of those kids were still around now. Though Ayumu Sato, the boy on the far left with the whitish-blue eyes, had moved to South Korea eventually, and Itsuki Kimura, the one kid on the team who had to peel every slice of pepperoni off his pizza before he would eat it, was killed in a car wreck. What a funeral that had been. His middle school team, his current team, a really great team. There was a picture of all of them carrying their coach on his back when they won the championship last year. (And the year before, haha.)

He could see photos of himself with his cousins, uncles, aunts, and other relatives, most of them from the one time he and his parents visited his grandparents' beach house in Kyushu five, no, six years ago. No, five. No, six.

Takeshi with his dog, Jiro. Jiro was all wet. He couldn't remember when this picture was taken, but it was one of the many times that Jiro was all wet, apparently.

Of course there were other pictures of his immediate family. Tsuyoshi and Hiroko Yamamoto, Takeshi's parents, together. They looked as happy as always. His mother in a hospital gown, holding Takeshi's brother as a newborn baby. Later she would take a picture of Takeshi giving little Kenta a ride on his shoulders. Those brothers adored each other, despite the large difference in age. Kenta Yamamoto was only born about the time that his beloved older brother met some wimpy kid named Tsuna Sawada, and Tsuna's unknowing future boyfriend, a nerdy Italian exchange student named Hayato Gokudera.

In fact, those two guys would become his very best friends. The three of them were inseparable almost from the start. The high-strung and independent Gokudera; the carefree and friendly Takeshi; and the sensible and empathetic Tsuna. They helped each other through some tough times in recent years, and always came out closer and stronger than ever. They understood each other on an incomparably deep level. In this picture of the trio, Takeshi stood in the middle wearing his Nami Middle baseball uniform with his arms slung around both boys' shoulders. Tsuna's smile was bright and warm and innocent. Takeshi's smile was big and joyful and whimsical. Gokudera's smile was fragile and thoughtful and all-too-rare.

Turning onto his side, Takeshi reached for the picture of himself with his two best friends in the whole world and held it close to his face, studying each detail. He remembered the moment that picture was taken, even though it had been rather insignificant. Dad had just asked the boys to "smile and act like you like each other," with a chuckle that he had passed down to both his sons. As soon as the picture was taken, Takeshi pulled his friends closer and said jokingly, "These are my bitches, yo." And they all laughed.

It had to be one of the nicest pictures of him with these friends. He could feel the cautious breeze that had coiled around them. He could smell the sun-drenched grass that had been beneath their feet. He could hear the crowd and the noise of the game in the background. And quietly he tried to recall just when everything stopped being so simple. Or if anything had been simple to begin with.

**XLV. There is hope after all. **

…When Tsuna laid his soft lips on Hayato's, and Hayato smiled into the kiss, closing his eyes with a gradual exhale against Tsuna's skin. Hayato set his hand gently near the nape of Tsuna's neck, the tip of his thumb lightly stroking behind Tsuna's ear. Their mouths opened wider as their heads fell slightly sideways. Tingling waves shot repeatedly all the way down their bodies. Goosebumps chilled their arms. The kiss became even deeper – the insides of their mouths were so warm – the brush of their skin so supple – they would think this was the closest thing to Ambrosia. Tsuna's tongue ventured cautiously outward. His eyes squeezed shut tighter as this was something he had never tried before. But Hayato met this brave move, touching the tip of his own tongue to the Tenth's, earning a pleased sigh from his boss. The Tenth tasted like homemade cake frosting, sugary and rich; Hayato tasted like mint washed out with spring water, mature and refreshing. They had melted into each other, matching shallow breaths and holding their bodies so close—. Eventually their lips began to peel apart, and their heads almost straightened. On the way out Hayato gently closed around Tsuna's bottom lip. The kiss ended with a tiny sound that only the two of them could possibly hear. Both their heads angled downward just a few degrees, the tips of their noses and their foreheads touching. Hayato's fingers relaxed and bent over the short brown hairs curling out of the back of Tsuna's neck.

Tsuna had to force his eyes to open even in the slightest. Once he did he saw the lash-blurred image of his boyfriend's pale skin. His eyes opened more as they floated up until he found Hayato's eyelids, thin and blue and closed. So he closed his too once again. They sat this way for a long moment, holding each other like precious treasures, the air they shared leaking in and out of their lungs. A warm light spread over them.

Until the Tenth lowered his head and Hayato placed a tender kiss between Tsuna's eyes, all at once. Tsuna buried his face deep in the crook of Hayato's neck. Hayato laid his head atop Tsuna's and pet his chestnut hair. Hayato's misted green eyes opened barely. But he saw the thick brown strands straight ahead of him, and his eyelids became too heavy and shut.

_If I could just sit here _

_Like this, with you, _

_And not have to _

_Eat or sleep or _

_Live or do anything_

_But just love you, _

_Do nothing but _

_Enjoy you _

_For eternity… _

_I would reach happiness. _

Sitting here, on the edge of this bed, their feelings innocent and pure overtaking them. Hayato holding the whole world in his arms. Tsuna's bleeding heart pounding and yearning for him. Nothing needed but their bodies and souls.

"Boys! Dinnertime!" Nana's voice came muffled through the door.

The boys grabbed each other tighter in protest of the command, but they had to let go sometime. And they looked at one another dreamy-eyed. And their arms tangled. And they kissed again, fleetingly. And a sense of dread drained their faces, even though they knew this obstacle was only temporary. And they stood. And their hands were entwined while they descended the stairs.

0o.o0o.o0

Because that was the most important thing to Gokudera. The only reason he did anything anymore – for the Tenth. The light in his dark world, the beauty amongst the beasts. With the Tenth in his arms, nothing else mattered. The mere thought of him made it all okay… This was the very reason why he couldn't tell him of his troubles. He could exist fine with this salvation. The Tenth was the one thing in his life that didn't involve the pain. If the Tenth knew, all the connections could be made and his whole life would be corrupted with this agony. The Tenth was the greatest blessing in his life, something that he felt he didn't deserve, and toward whom he wished he could somehow convey his gratitude. Never meant to be a tool for further destruction.

Gokudera lived for the next time he saw the Tenth, so for at least a minute, he would feel something real.

0o.o0o.o0

Because Tsuna knew he did not belong in this world. With each day that passed as boss, he could feel himself breaking. All this blood and death and betrayal: he made it happen and he hated it. So to keep dormant the monster he knew he could become, Tsuna would grab onto Hayato. For reassurance. To know that he still mattered, that there was indeed a light inside him that had not been forgotten. He was not _the Vongola Tenth_ here. In Hayato's arms, he felt naked in the best way, stripped of all wicked baggage he carried – like the fire powers that made his enemies cringe, or that generations-old black cloak that crushed his shoulders – until he remembered who he really was again. He remembered why all this mattered. He remembered a body did more than bleed – it held a soul.

To Tsuna, Hayato, even in his flaws, was the single source of truth, purity, love, humanity that existed in this world anymore, and he was determined to never let it go.

**XLVI. In need of Vicodin. **

Hibari's office was the perfect place for secret meetings during school, even for the non-middle-schoolers. He made sure nobody came in, anyway, who wasn't invited.

Tsuna leaned against the Cloud Guardian's desk, crossing his arms casually, as he read off the report his right-hand man had laid out for him. "…We're starting negotiations with the Armando Famiglia next week. Until then, all trade has ceased between both parties. Which means our profit from the narcotics sector will be a little short for the time being." Gokudera, to his right, nodded.

"So does this mean our budget's getting cut?" Ryohei asked.

"Not necessarily," Gokudera answered. "That is unless the Armando drag this on longer than we expect."

Chrome shuffled her feet. "Is there anything in there about… th-the…"

"The Kokuyo Gang?" Tsuna asked. Chrome nodded. Tsuna flipped through a few pages. "Not much. We tried to contact Rokudo and the others yesterday, but they declined."

Chrome took a step backward quietly.

"I think that's it for the major stuff. Threat level is one-point-five out of five right now – pretty calm. Uh, the Tomaso will be talking to us next Friday on establishing a formal alliance… Our peace operations are going well in Sicily and Colombia… You know, we are off to a lucky start. The Ninth was right." Tsuna chuckled a little.

"I wonder how the Ninth is right now, speaking of him," Yamamoto ventured. He put his hand on his chin.

"Probably still farting around," Ryohei said, "Enjoying retirement. He certainly deserves i—"

Suddenly Gokudera put his hand to his head and exhaled loudly. He looked rather pale. Even Hibari looked up, for a short moment.

"You all right, Gokudera?" Yamamoto asked.

Gokudera's chest heaved under his shirt. "Yeah," he breathed, sulking over to the couch a few feet away, "Yeah, I just. Need to sit down for a minute." He put both hands on his head and ducked it down a little, his eyes closed, every breath short and labored. "I'm sorry. G-go on."

But for a few minutes, no one said a word. Ryohei, Chrome, Yamamoto and Tsuna all stared at each other and at him. Eventually they picked up where they left off.

"So we're good for now?" Tsuna said. His Sun, Mist and Rain Guardians nodded in agreement. Tsuna smiled. "Remember, we're all" and then everyone else chanted with him in unison, "friends first and mafia second." At that the others left the room one at a time.

Tsuna knelt on the floor in front of Hayato, putting a hand gently on his boyfriend's shoulder. Hibari didn't pay much mind to the Sky and Storm Guardians, just kept his nose buried in and pen scribbling on whatever paper was on his desk.

"Are you feeling okay, _really_?" Tsuna asked.

_How many times am I going to have to hear that today? _Hayato thought. "A little nauseous. I'll be fine," he said.

Doubtful, Tsuna put the back of his hand to Hayato's forehead. "Hayato, you feel cold," he said.

"Your hand is warm," Hayato replied. He lifted his head slightly so he could look his boss in the eye.

Tsuna didn't argue with this, but he still didn't like it. He moved his hand up slightly past Hayato's widow's peak, brushing away some strands of that pretty silver hair, and kissed his forehead.

"You still feel cold," he said.

Hibari's voice came to them from the direction of the desk. "If you're going to crowd like that, then get out of my office," he said.

Tsuna rose to his feet, turning to look at Hibari, who was once again hunched over his desk, writing. "Fair enough," Tsuna said. "Thanks for letting us meet in here, Hibari-san." He offered Hayato his hand, but Hayato refused it with a cordial lowering of his head. So he grimaced, grabbed the report off the edge of the desk, and walked out of the Disciplinary Committee HQ.

The simple whispers of the ink along the paper seemed like grand thunder to Hayato. All sound was big sound. In this state, the best he could do was keep his eyes shut and his head between his knees. He sat like this for a few moments. All the while, even breathing hurt.

Finally, Hibari spoke to him. "You don't belong here," he said.

Hayato clasped his palms over his ears. His head felt feather-light and like a ton at the same time. With a bit of struggle, he eventually straightened out to his feet and was able to walk out the door without losing his track like a drunken young sailor on a wave-battered ship.

**XLVII. Shattered nightmares. **

He was polite when he kissed his boss goodbye in front of the Sawada house. He was well enough as he walked alone back to his home. He was uneasy walking through the lobby of the building, going up the elevator with two other strangers. He was dizzy hurrying down the hall. Hayato was so desperate by the time he unlocked his front door that he slammed it shut, shed his backpack onto the concrete floor, burst into the bathroom and –.

Blood came out while he held his head over the toilet. He hadn't eaten a thing that day; there was nothing else to vomit out.

Hayato's hands grabbed the edges of the toilet seat, tight and cold and white-knuckled. The smooth porcelain strangled him. He sat frozen there for a moment, panting and moaning, his entire body quaking. He couldn't open his eyes to the bloody stomach acid that had to be there under his face.

Hayato coughed a few more times – he felt like screaming, but all that came out was a series of deep and painful coughs – and then more blood. His whole body went numb. His wretches were so powerful he thought he would have fallen into the toilet with them, headfirst.

Suddenly he recognized that his head was _pounding_. An almost impossibly high-pitched ringing shot from ear to ear; the pain radiated from his head to the rest of his body, it was debilitating; he didn't want to open his eyes, as even with his eyelids over them he saw those colored spots dancing around, and the whole world shaking and multiplying. He felt like he couldn't even breathe. He couldn't.

His stomach still had turbulence, but he protested, using the toilet to pull himself onto his feet. He flushed it. His tired sigh turned into a whimper by the end.

He whirled around without feeling so and hit the sink with his palms and his torso. The impact knocked the wind out of him. He hunched over and hacked mouthfuls of blood into the sink bowl.

But at that he made the mistake of opening his eyes. The thick red liquid gravitated slowly toward the drain – he watched them slink downward for a few seconds. Then his head rushed, and the colors dulled, the feelings numbed, the sounds faded, the smells dispelled, of everything. All the things that were spinning before had anchored themselves now. All the weight seemed to disappear from his head.

The vision overwhelmed him of snow falling; the walls of his apartment dissipated to be replaced with snow. Snow. Snow. Everywhere.

Out in the misted distance, a band of people approached. They trudged over the snow pileup in long fur boots. They all had masks on. The masks were plain white, like the faces found on department store mannequins. Perfect and lifeless.

One other masked person came from behind him and put his hand on Hayato's shoulder, but Hayato didn't feel it. The person said something muffled by the mask. Hayato was too bewildered to say any words, but made a huffing sound, the start of a word he couldn't complete, and the person hurried away.

He could faintly sense a small breeze hit him in the back of the legs. It kept blowing, so he turned around to see an industrial fan, spinning at him through a large square grate. Just beyond it the snow had melted into a blood- and ash-soaked linoleum floor. Several bodies were strewn about on the floor, smoldering and immobile. Blood and carnage were everywhere. Hayato realized that the white stuff falling all around him wasn't snow – it was ash. He could see himself checking the pulse of one of the bodies. He began panting, but only in, not out – gasping repeatedly.

At the back of the linoleum area was an altar. Ancient, charming. A wooden statue of Jesus stood chipping at the head of it. Smoke curled out from the bottom corner of the molding. The smoke went faster and denser, and soon, a flicker. The entire altar was slowly burning away. He could see himself there too, racing about to salvage a stack of books on the small staircase. He whined a few times, perhaps calling to that boy, to himself, to get out of there, but he didn't know, he just felt desperate and confused and the noise leaked out of him uncontrollably.

Hayato's knees buckled out from under him – but he caught himself on another wall he had not noticed, a tall one, gray, intimidating. Along the wall: a security guard wrestling with a young boy, and then a gunshot, and the guard fell. Hayato shuddered, the panting more urgent.

Hayato slammed his back against the wall as he felt every vision crushing down on him. Out of the thick white clouds overhead, a helicopter floated toward the ground. He wasn't inside the thing, but he could hear the blades and the engine as loudly as if he were. "N… n, n… s…" He didn't have the thought or the physical capability to cry out.

Further in the distance, beyond the snow, a vineyard, with children running barefoot through it. The heaving breaths moved him. "S…–" He gasped, and moaned out a pitiful sound. The cold sweat that coated his skin was beginning to get to him.

"Sss_ahhh_, hah, ah…" It seemed his lungs overtook the entire inside of his body and he could not fill them.

A large splash of blood narrowly missed his head, instead splattering against the wall, following the boom of a gunshot in the distance.

"Ssssst—"

Breathe in, breathe out. He almost couldn't stand it. He couldn't even feel the air move in and out of him. He hissed out a "Sss..." His body swung into the opposite extreme. For but a moment, all the air surrounding him became still, as did he. His shoulders drooped.

The altar became an inferno. The helicopter whipped up the ash and snow into a blizzard. The grapevines wound over the paths. The wall behind him hardened even further. All the other hims vanished, and he felt a wave of absolution.

A violent gasp.

"_STOP! TORTURING! ME!" _

Hayato's hands lunged to his head, his fingers burying themselves in his hair. He leaned forward weakly, his eyes wide and bloodshot, and he started breathing the life back into his body, panting. The whole world turned to him, slowing down. The person from before appeared close to him.

"_GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" _he screamed. _"STOP IT!" _

The fire kept burning, over there and inside him. He could feel the flames licking at him. Gasp, sigh, gasp, sigh. His panting intensified.

"_I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" _

He firmed his feet into the snow, straightened his back, balled up his hand, swung his arm at the masked face beside him–

–His fist plowed straight through the medicine cabinet door, through the glass mirror and the cheap wood. He screamed. Suddenly he was back in reality. Back in his apartment. Back in his bathroom.

Hayato's headache throbbed again. All his muscles ached again. He felt like fainting again. His throat and stomach constricted again. He tasted the blood in the back of his mouth again. The shards of glass and splinters formed a ring around his wrist, blocking out his submerged hand. Through the web of cracks in the mirror he could make out his own reflection. He was paler than a ghost, drenched in sweat, with a thick stream of blood coming out of his mouth. He pulled the hand out with a whimper and his knuckles and wrist and _everything was bleeding_, but he didn't look at it, he just clutched the fist close to his chest, and it stung immensely. Tiny slivers of glass and wood were stuck in most of the cuts.

"Son of a bitch," he spat. He slammed the back of his head against the bathroom wall, his teeth gritted, sliding his back down the wall until he hit the tile floor. He sat there to let his panting calm. The pain was unimaginable. But at least now nothing else was imagined.

**XLVIII. You're under. **

Friday. The three boys unwrapped the paper from around the sticks of gum and stuck them in their mouths at the same time. They exchanged pleased faces.

Yamamoto was the first to speak then. "Oh, it's fruity and then minty! So that's what the box means by 'surprise!'"

Tsuna gave him a puzzled look, but it turned into a nod almost instantly. "I see it now," he said. Enma just nodded shyly in response.

Adelheid was staying behind to help Hibari with extra Disciplinary Committee work. Chrome had after-school cleaning duty. Hana was on a family vacation. Shitopi had detention for skipping class. Kyoko had to attend a student council meeting. Hayato didn't show up to school at all that day. So Tsuna Sawada, Takeshi Yamamoto, and Enma Kozato had to walk home from school alone today.

They had not made it far beyond the campus when Yamamoto made an unexpected turn. Tsuna and Enma stopped mid-stride and mid-conversation to look at him, and he just smiled innocently. "I, um, have something else to do. Over here. I'll talk to you guys later or tomorrow or something," he said. Yamamoto reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper; it looked to have been folded a few times, and it had an address scrawled on it in his handwriting in pencil.

Holding up his free hand to wave to his friend (while the other hand clutched a backpack strap), Tsuna smiled understandingly and said, "See you, then." Enma reluctantly followed his friend. Now it was only the two bosses. Their shadows seemed longer than normal underneath them.

"So, that project," Tsuna continued. "Chrome and I are, like, ninety-nine percent done with it. The problem is, now, we have to print that rubric and self-evaluate before we can turn it in, you know? Our printers are broken. Well, Chrome's is out of ink, but she doesn't have the time or money right now to replace the ink cartridges. And my printer's completely crazy. It won't talk to my computer. I have to re-connect them all the time, which takes really long and is pretty frustrating. As soon as I hit print, though, it says, 'No printer connected.' Over and over again. And at our base – it's so new we don't even have a printer yet. We just got electricity. Ugh. I hate technology sometimes. Wonder if I can get someone else to print for me…"

Enma said nothing. Just stared straight ahead. It was impossible to read whether or not he was paying attention, with his almost eternally bored eyes and mopey scowl.

Tsuna chuckled. "Oh, yeah, that's right, I didn't even tell you! Our new base was completed. Well, sort of. I can't tell you where it is since that's sort of against the rules, even though I do trust you, I just – anyway, it's great in there. Finally, a professional place for my Guardians and me to do business. We moved into it this past weekend, when we got the clear that it was sound. It's only one big office room, a bathroom and an elevator so far, but we're planning on expanding, definitely. We're all excited anyway. Hayato and Shoichi and Spanner and Giannini are heading up the construction of the base, and they said eventually it'll be so big that we'll all have our own offices. For now all seven of us have our desks and computers in that one big room. There's a mini-fridge in the corner, too, because Hayato said not everyone wants to step out for a soda, haha. Maybe sometime soon I'll be able to invite you over there to check it out." He looked to his left, to see the face of his friend, but he found no reply.

Tsuna's smile turned to a concerned frown rather quickly at this. "Enma-kun," he said. Enma faced him. Their pace slowed. "You've been a little weird for… a long time now, actually. Are you okay?" Sympathy, ready to be received, poured from the tenth Vongola.

Shying his eyes away from the boy – his big brown eyes that swallowed the world, and his cute button nose, and his bright smile, his euphonious voice, _dear God, he could see why Gokudera loved him, he couldn't see how any person wouldn't _– Enma heaved a sigh through his bandaged nose. He bit his bottom lip and half-shrugged.

"Come on," Tsuna said. "You remember Greenery Day? I asked P. how you and she knew Hayato and I were together. She said 'It's because I know Gokudera-kun and Enma knows you that we could tell something was up with you guys.' Well, I know you. I'm your friend. If something's wrong, certainly you can tell me. I'll listen. I won't be upset."

Enma didn't say anything, just kept going. The boys passed a crosswalk in silence.

"Enma-kun," Tsuna said, and he grabbed his friend's forearm lightly.

Enma's head whipped around. He yanked his arm out from Tsuna's grasp and furrowed his eyebrows right in Tsuna's face, his dreary red eyes blazing. "Don't touch me." His usually quiet voice was firm in its command.

Tsuna looked hurt. Now he was more determined than ever to find the issue. "Enma-kun…"

His friend backed away slowly, the holes in his black leather shoes gaping and closing with each step. "I – have to go," he said. He muttered something like "See you tomorrow" and took off running (clumsily) down the road.

Tsuna stood there, watching sadly on as his friend became smaller and then turned. He sighed and walked home the rest of the way completely alone.

**XLIX. The silence only eats us from the inside out. **

This was Gokudera's second shower today; by the time he was finished he had scrubbed himself almost raw, as if his problems laid only on the surface, and he had stood under the shower head until the screams could be heard no more from beyond the drain. The cold water hammering on his skin felt like redemption.

He opened the shower curtain and took half a step out when his eye came to the broken mirror on the opposite wall. He froze and regarded his fractured reflection – the stranger looking back at him. A quick look around and he knew he was still right here. He took a towel off the bar and wrapped it low around his waist. Step two: peel off the soaked bandages from around his right hand. It was disfigured. He couldn't bend or straighten his fingers any further. The cuts were quite fresh and a good many of them still bled and hurt, but he was sure he had gotten all the little irritants out after a tweezing session, and cleaned up every bit of debris from the broken cabinet yesterday. He would probably fix the thing this weekend, make it look like nothing had happened. But the hand would take some time to heal up. Even with the help of the Sun Flames. He sighed and strung the wet bandage roll over the towel bar to dry. Next he took out a fresh roll from the medicine cabinet and began to wind it all around his injured hand.

It was still difficult putting on his pants or functioning in general with only one hand. He was somehow able to handle it, though, and it seemed the second he pulled his shirt over his head he heard a knock at the door.

_Who – what – why the hell…? _Gokudera pushed his arms through the short sleeves, grabbed a jacket. He slid the jacket on fully as he headed toward the door.

He brought his eye to the peek-hole in the door and what he saw brought a frown to his face. He undid all the locks and opened the door wide enough only to see out with both eyes. Careful to conceal his bandaged hand from view.

"Hey, Gokudera," said the visitor with a wave and that familiar easygoing grin.

"Yamamoto," Gokudera said. He furrowed his eyebrows. "How do you know where I live?" He clutched the door a little further shut.

Yamamoto shoved his large, tan hands into his pants pockets. "Hibari gave me access to the student directory for five minutes," he explained. "He owed me one. You know how he is."

"Oh." Gokudera shrugged slightly as he gave an uncomfortable scowl.

Yamamoto forced a smile onto his face. He couldn't _breathe_, but he sure felt like sighing. "So how are things with Tsuna?" he asked after a moment.

"The Tenth? Fine," Gokudera said. His eyes drifted off to the side for a split-second as though the subject was top-secret. He shifted his stance slightly.

"Good," Yamamoto said breezily. "You two are good together." He smiled a little wider then and leaned in closer to his friend, bright-eyed. This made Gokudera tense up. "You know who I've been thinking of asking out? Haru."

"Really?" Gokudera's eyebrows quirked. "That girl?" he said.

Yamamoto nodded. "Yeah. I've always thought she was pretty cute – except you know, she's been infatuated with Tsuna for forever – but since he's with you now, that leaves her available, I guess. I want to at least try." His grin visibly changed from a fake one to a hopeful one.

"Well, you're both idiots, so you've got that going for you," Gokudera said. He poured on the rudeness so that maybe the conversation would end sooner. Yamamoto just laughed.

There was a moment of rather cold silence between the two of them: Yamamoto's eyes wandered down the long hall in both directions, and Gokudera kept shuffling his feet.

"I don't mean to be rude," Yamamoto said, "But are we going to stand here this whole time or can I come in? Or do you want me to just leave?"

A low noise rumbled up from Gokudera's throat. _You were the one who dropped in unexpectedly, you prick_, he thought about saying to him, but didn't, _Especially when a few hours ago you didn't even know where this place was_. He gritted his teeth and his eyes searched frantically for an answer – then he ushered in Yamamoto, who, after sauntering through the door and casting off his shoes and dropping his backpack, scanned every part of the place that he could see. His goal: to make his host feel as uncomfortable as possible, so he might slip up and admit what Yamamoto had feared all along.

He sat right down on the disheveled couch near the front of the room, much to Gokudera's chagrin. "Wow," he said. "It's a lot smaller in here than I thought it was gonna be."

"It used to be part of the neighbor's apartment, but they changed it up during renovations," the host tried to explain as even-tempered as possible. "It's all I can afford." He shut the door gently and latched only a few of the locks. Also he tried to hide his hand as inconspicuously as possible. For now, his plan was to make his guest feel as uncomfortable as possible, so perhaps he would leave and, if he did it right, never come back.

"Ah," Yamamoto said. Gokudera frowned. Yamamoto started again on the subject of finding this place. "You know, I always knew the general direction of where you came from in the mornings, but I never knew, like, the street or the building or anything." A pause. "Do you live alone?"

As if on cue, a slender brown cat leapt onto the couch cushion and nestled up against Yamamoto's thigh. "Aw!" he said. "I didn't know you had a cat! What's his name?"

"It's a girl," Gokudera said. "Melone – is her name. I call her 'Mel' for short." He knew Mel was female because he remembered helping to deliver a litter of her kittens once before, and then paying to get her spayed shortly thereafter.

The guest rubbed his fingertip against the ruffled fur of her neck, which caused her to immediately start purring. "I'm more of a dog person, but cats are still cool too." He observed her pleased facial expression. "I've heard female cats are skittish. Mel seems friendly though."

Gokudera had to agree. She was no ordinary cat. She even got along well with Uri.

Then the silver-haired teen sighed, resigning to his fate as temporary caretaker of this baseball freak. He started toward the fridge. "I don't have much food..." he said.

"That's fine," Yamamoto said. "You weren't expecting me anyway." He squinted his brown eyes at his host by the kitchenette. Partially covered by the extra-long jacket sleeve… _was that what he thought he saw? _

"What happened to your hand?" Yamamoto asked in his best innocent voice.

At that Gokudera froze for a second, and balled his left hand into a white-knuckled fist, and dear _God_ his head _hurt_ like a _bitch_. Then he tried his best to even out his strides the remainder of the distance. "Ramuné?" he asked. He opened the fridge door and took out two glass bottles by the neck.

"I asked you a question first."

Gokudera spun on his heels. "And I asked you if you wanted ramuné."

"_Dera_." Yamamoto's voice was flat and scolding and much more serious than usual. His eyes hardened looking up at his friend. The cat jumped off his lap.

Glancing down at his hand, Gokudera quickly tried to formulate a good story. "This thing? It's really stupid," he said. "I mean, I failed _so hard_." He laughed. Yamamoto could tell he was faking.

He went along with it anyway, showing one of his trademark Yamamoto Grins and nodding and leaving his explanation at that. Then he held up his hands. Gokudera tossed him one of the ramuné bottles, and he caught it, as the former had assumed he would. Gokudera, turning to the counter again, set his own bottle down on the countertop without opening it.

Yamamoto brought the bottle to his lips, but stopped when the liquid just pushed past the little glass ball. "Dera?" Gokudera turned around. Yamamoto held his bottle high.

"To_ honesty_," he said, "And _friendship_."

Gokudera frowned a little. _Just what was that Baseball Idiot trying to pull? _With a small eye-roll he picked up his bottle, pushed the ball in through the top with his thumb, and raised it sarcastically in his best friend's direction before the two of them took a sip.

For the next few minutes, there were very few words between the two boys. Yamamoto nursed his ramuné while taking in his surroundings and thinking through some things. Gokudera mulled over something at the kitchenette counter. He never touched his soda. Yamamoto watched the back of his distracted friend for a moment. He couldn't help but note things about him. His silver hair was limp and looked barely dried, and it appeared he had some sort of tattoo on the back of his neck. His shoulders were sunken. He breathed deeply – each inhale and each exhale moved him. It was obvious from the depth of the wrinkles and the way he looked so stiff there that he in no way filled out those clothes.

It took a few times looking in the other direction before Yamamoto noticed, but he noticed nonetheless, a rather oddly folded tissue under the lamp on the end table. There were blood spots on it. And the edge of a razorblade stuck out. He saw the glint of the sharp metal and a discomforting sting ravaged through him. He stayed dead silent for a while, just staring at the thing. He almost couldn't think. In this moment, nothing scared him more than that razorblade, and all the implications that came with it.

Finally able to get over it enough, Yamamoto said finally, "Hey, Dera, do you mind if I use your bathroom?" He leaned forward and set the nearly empty ramuné bottle down on the coffee table. He wanted to get out of here, but he was more curious and empathetic than that, at the same time.

Gokudera almost jumped out of his skin. _Oh, God, he needs to use the bathroom. If he goes in there he'll see the broken mirror, the bandages – he could see more. But if I tell him no, he'll suspect something, and he already suspects something. I could say I don't have a bathroom. No, wait, the door's open, I'm pretty sure I left the bathroom door open. I don't want him to see. Maybe I could make an excuse to go in there first, and hide everything. But how could I possibly hide that broken mirror? You know what, he should just leave, yeah. But – ugh! This is so awkward – this is a disaster – what do I d—?_

"Sure, go ahead," he mumbled with a quiet sigh.

Gritting his teeth beneath a smile, Yamamoto stood from the couch and said, "Thanks," and as an afterthought, he grabbed the razorblade off the end table while he walked, shoving it in his pocket, careful not to accidentally cut himself on it.

Yamamoto shut the bathroom door like someone was after him. He cast thorough glances all around, from the perspective of this very position inside the door. The air was still a little thick in here, the shower curtain still dripping at the bottom, the towel folded moist on the bar – Gokudera showered not too long ago. Probably got out just before he arrived. Folded pair of glasses and empty contacts case by the faucet. Dying single recess light in the ceiling. Small window, misted, single-paned, fixed. Tile floor. Dark green paint on the walls. It was rather small in here. The sink and toilet both looked recently bleached.

He took one step forward and stopped when he saw the giant hole in the middle of the door of the medicine cabinet above the sink. He grabbed the handle on the medicine cabinet door and opened it, and the sight of over a dozen orange prescription bottles on the top shelves immediately took him. _Pain reliever, heartburn stopper – antidepressant? _Yamamoto took every bottle out one by one and read the labels, and each one shocked him more than the last. Realizing that he was taking a bit long in here, he gently brought the medicine cabinet door to a close, flushed the unused toilet, and turned on the sink for a few seconds to make it sound like he was washing his hands. He came out of the bathroom trying hard to make a happy face.

**L. Exposed.**

Yamamoto sat himself down quietly on the futon couch, folding his hands and putting them between his knees. He stared at the back of Gokudera's head from the corner of his eyes.

"So, um," he began, "You punch pretty hard if I remember right. Didn't you give me a bloody nose that one time?" He didn't wait for an answer, but for Gokudera to tense up. "Yeah, and I admit I was seeing stars for a few hours after that." Yamamoto reached for his ramuné and drank the last of it. "Is that what happened to your medicine cabinet door?"

He almost smirked when Gokudera squirmed and turned his upper body to see his friend in his peripherals. "A-actually, a bird flew in the bathroom window and hit the thing. Scared me half to death," Gokudera explained.

Grimacing, Yamamoto continued on that thought. "Oh, really?"

Gokudera nodded nervously, and was about to turn his head back to what he was doing before when Yamamoto stopped him with, "But the window in there doesn't open." He froze. He stared straight ahead, eyes widening. A vein popped slightly in his forehead.

"How did you break your hand, really, Gokudera?" Yamamoto asked.

He said nothing. He just bit down harshly on his teeth, a sinking feeling in his chest. He could feel his elaborate web unraveling with each word that came out of Yamamoto's mouth. He grabbed at the lip of the counter and squeezed his hand around it, leaving the right to lie on the edge.

He heard Yamamoto stand and immediately he faced forward and bowed his head. If he gritted his teeth hard enough, closed his eyes long enough, wished it passionately enough, this could all turn out to be another terrible dream in the end, and Yamamoto would just up and fucking disa—

Yamamoto gripped Gokudera's shoulder and turned him around by it. There was a burning determination in his brown eyes. Gokudera had almost never seen his friend look this way before. They met face-to-face, and at Yamamoto's formidable scowl, Gokudera instantly knew it was all over. Yamamoto grabbed Gokudera's bandaged right hand gruffly, making the latter wince and try in vain to pull away; flipped it palm-side up, placed his thumb and forefingers across Gokudera's jacket sleeve.

And pushed the sleeve up to his elbow.

0o.o0o.o0

**It's never canonically stated that Yamamoto's mother is dead, right? I think that's just an assumption that the fandom has made and widely accepted. So I'm debunking it, savvy? ^^ **

**DUN DUN DUNNNNN! **

**Yeah the last two sections feel a little rushed. Do you think so? I might go back and re-write them. But I was tired XD **


	6. Just because you can't

**Why is this chapter so hugeeee D8 **

**I'm sorry it took so long for me to update this time. I had to rewrite the beginning of this chapter several times and I still don't like it. Oh well. The story must go on. **

**To provide some sort of explanation as to what the heck is wrong with Gokkun: I'm not going to tell you exactly what's wrong with him, or why, in this author's note, because all of it will be revealed sooner or later. However I did realize that I was rather abrupt with him becoming sick. I tried to drop some subtle hints here and there the past few chapters but they could be taken differently, so they weren't really like hints at all. It wasn't that obvious before either because he was hiding it. So… yeah. Don't worry, I have several chapters and little plot arcs and things planned out for this fic. Everything will be explained eventually, and solved more or less. I apologize for causing any worry by not being clear. **

**Thank you to all reviewers and people of that like. I'm quite glad that some of you enjoy reading this as much as I like writing it. (: **

**Chapter Six: ****Just because you can't see me doesn't mean I can't see you. **

**LI. I can feel it all around me, the heat. **

Melting backwards onto his bed, Tsuna held his cell phone out an arm's length away and redialed one last time. Just as soon as he hit the final button, he activated the speaker so he could hear Hayato's voice loud and clear. That was all he needed, all he wanted; hearing Hayato's voice right now would make him feel a million times better.

The phone didn't even ring. "You've reached _La Casa di Partito_. Sexy fun times for all. Please ho—" He didn't think it was all that funny anymore. Tsuna said nothing, instead hanging up, dropping his phone onto the blankets and heaving a sigh. As the breath left his lips, he started to feel hot in the throat and wet at the eyes. He sighed again, louder. He began to shake.

He threw out swears and curses in his mind. They weren't directed at anyone or anything in particular. In the moment, he had simply decided that he hated his life and all things associated with it. His mother was "on the rag," as was the other woman of the house; he received failing grade after failing grade at school today, and was tardy to two classes; one of his best friends acted very awkward; his other best friend seemed spacey all day and ignored him; and his boyfriend, who hadn't shown up to school at all, wouldn't even turn on his phone. Tsuna figured he had a _right_ to be upset.

Another consciousness beckoned him: he shut his eyes, his head sank heavily into the pillow, and his entire self emptied with one more profound sigh. He woke in what felt like a different dimension. He could feel the flames dancing around his hands that hung limply over either edge of the bed, but he didn't lay eyes on them. All he could do was stare into the blackness surrounding him. Somehow, this just didn't feel the same. A heavy feeling nagged at him, prevented him from relaxing fully. He didn't realize what it was exactly at first, but the thought slowly took shape in his head. When he sat up, the darkness dissolved away, leaving him in his room again.

He half-coughed into his wrist, springing upward, and grabbed his iPhone again. He may never get through to that boy today, but that didn't mean he would quit trying.

**LII. Hide and seek. **

Immediately Gokudera yanked his hand out of Yamamoto's grip, shielding it to his chest again and stretched his jacket sleeve all the way back down to his wrist. He looked offended, afraid; then, in an instant, angry.

Yamamoto had gotten only a second's glimpse at the scars ripping along his best friend's arm. But that was all he needed.

"I knew it." The words leaked out of Yamamoto's mouth soundlessly, like his worst nightmare getting squeezed out of his heart.

Gokudera's expression stiffened – he overcompensated for the cold wave of paleness that washed over him at that second. His eyes hardened into a stony glare up at his friend's face.

The guest only stood there, silent, unsure of what emotion to express or even feel. Eventually he was forced into saying something, _anything_.

"You… cut yourself."

His tone was in no way accusing, teasing or offended. Though he knew this was not his fault at all, he couldn't help but feel that Gokudera did this just because he had predicted it.

Gokudera's foot moved backward further into the counter as if he tried to back away but had been blocked. Yamamoto just inched closer. "It's not what it looks like," Gokudera said, his voice wavering as he shook his head, and he found he couldn't stop shaking his head.

Frowning, Yamamoto withdrew the razorblade from his pocket and stuck it directly in front of his friend's face. "You mean to say that this" – the metal briefly caught the light, stopping at the edge of the dried blood spots – "has never, _never_ touched your skin?"

Gray-green eyes went wide. "Wh-where did you get that?" Gokudera asked. He lunged for it, but Yamamoto held it high over his head. "Gokudera," Yamamoto said firmly. He looked his friend dead in the eye. "Don't lie to me. You cut yourself, don't you?"

"Whether I do or don't is none of your business," Gokudera quipped. He made another attempt to grab the blade, but Yamamoto jolted it out of his reach again.

"Gokudera," his voice raised.

Gokudera drew a quiet, sharp, shallow breath to try and hide the nauseous feeling that suddenly stabbed him right in the gut, and contain the cold sweat that ached to come out of him and the lightheadedness blooming in the center of his brain. His silver eyebrows furrowed. The air felt thick and painful as it flowed in and out of him – but only for a moment of silence. He hunched forward, half-collapsing into Yamamoto, who instantly changed in expression as he caught him. The blade dropped to the floor. He held Gokudera by the forearms. The Italian inexplicably began panting, which turned into a violent coughing fit. Yamamoto, who tried his best to ignore the tiny droplets of blood that landed on the floor beneath his friend's coughing mouth, held him loosely like this for a couple of minutes while Gokudera tried to catch his breath. His entire upper body floundered with the deep inhales and exhales.

"Alright," Gokudera mumbled. He shut his eyes. "Alright. Alright." He considered looking up at his friend, but felt too weak to do so. "Alright. I admit it. I cut myself. Are you happy now?"

The rock-hard lump in Yamamoto's throat melted and he swallowed it, the corners of his lips turning downward. "Dera…"

Gokudera struggled to stand up as straight as he could so he could see Yamamoto's heartbroken gold eyes. "It's not for the reasons you might think," he said with a whimper.

Grimacing, Yamamoto cautioned to let go of Gokudera, but unconsciously grabbed again at his upper arm anyway. "Why don't we sit down?" he suggested. "You don't look so well." He began to lead Gokudera to the couch. "You haven't, actually, for a while," he added under his breath. Gokudera was normally too prideful to accept help from Yamamoto just to _walk_, but somehow his confession had drained him, mentally and physically. For but a second, his headache faded out.

**LIII. Look both ways. **

So many attempts to reach Hayato had failed that Tsuna's heart was beginning to physically hurt him – when, as soon as he hung up the umpteenth time, the phone rang for him. _Shimon Home. _

Tsuna selected _Answer_ and held the iPhone up to his ear. "Hello?"

"Tsuna." It was Adelheid Suzuki at the other end of the line. Her voice was terse as though she was ready to start, or had just finished, scolding someone.

Feeling tense, he replied, "Oh, Adelheid. Am I in trouble or something?"

She gave him no verbal answer, but rather a groan of sorts.

His grip on the phone tightened until his knuckles turned white. "That means yes, doesn't it?" he asked.

"No, I just need to talk about something with you," she said.

"What?"

She cleared her throat. "Have you noticed anything weird about Enma?" There was not even a hint of concern in her voice, leading Tsuna to further believe that he had done something wrong.

"Yeah, actually, I have," he said. "Is he feeling okay?"

"He could be better," she said.

"Well, is there anything I can do?"

A pause. Tsuna shuffled in his place, pulling the blanket partway up the pillow. Adelheid sighed but not into the receiver.

"Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush. Just so you know, Tsuna, you did nothing wrong, but you have to do something about this at any rate."

Tsuna clutched the phone closer to the side of his face.

"Enma's in love with you."

"En – …" Tsuna's heart jumped. Red heat painted his cheeks. "B-but… But I thought we were friends."

"You are friends," she said. "You've been really nothing but nice to him, Tsuna. That's the problem, though: what you thought was platonic friendship, well, he took it a different way."

Tsuna didn't know what to say. He had so many questions. His already aching heart broke into pieces.

"How long has this been going on?" Tsuna asked, fisting the fabric of his shirt over his chest.

"For a while," Adelheid said. "I'm the only person he's told, and it surprised me a little, but at the same time, it didn't. I had never seen him express any interest of that sort before, in women or men. He's really hooked on you, though. I mean… you dating Gokudera was like his worst nightmare. He had a hunch for a long time that you two had something, but the day you came out, the day you revealed yourselves, Enma came home and cried on my lap all night."

"Oh, no," Tsuna breathed. "I'm _sorry_. I really am. My God."

"Tsuna."

"Yes?" He was shaking now.

"You love Gokudera, yes?"

He recounted how many times he had tried and failed to call his boyfriend since he got home, and the pain seemed to weld his shattered heart back together. "Yes, I do. I do. Very much, I do." He didn't even hesitate, didn't even waver, didn't even regret a word.

"That's what I figured," Adelheid said. "So there's no chance in the near future of you breaking up with him and possibly considering Enma."

Tsuna shook his head soundlessly, but she didn't have to hear anything.

"Enma knows this. He knows all too painfully well that you and Gokudera are perfect for each other. He's admitted it himself. That's why he feels so bad, Tsuna. Enma loves you so much. He knows that if he lets on at all about his feelings for you, he'll hurt you because he wants you to be happy and he doesn't want to guilt you. He's just had a hard time containing himself lately. And Enma won't say anything directly so I decided to warn you myself."

Tsuna sighed. "God. I don't… I'm so sorry."

"It's best, I think, if you go to him and deal with this as soon as possible. If you let it fester and his love goes unrequited and unaddressed for too long, I'm afraid of what he might do. You know. You've seen him go crazy before." Adelheid hid her shudder. It was contagious.

"O-okay," Tsuna said after a minute. His breath had gotten stuck somewhere in his throat, and he had to work hard to push it out.

"Be clear," she advised. "Don't settle for something you don't want. You love Gokudera. Stay with him. Tell Enma you're staying with Gokudera. Make it clear that you would rather pursue a platonic relationship with Enma. His heart is in a very fragile place right now – it's close to breaking, if it hasn't already broken." She sighed again, a quicker, slightly dejected sigh. "Please, Tsuna. I just want Enma to get on with his life. He's miserable right now, and you know how much I care about him."

"All right," Tsuna said. "I'll talk to him tomorrow." He turned in place and leaned his back against the wall, the fingers of his free hand gripping the edge of the bed. "Thank you for letting me know, Adelheid."

"Oh, and Tsuna."

"Hm?"

Her tone suddenly hardened again, to an even sharper point this time. "On that note: be clear, but for God's sake, be _gentle_. If you hurt him…"

He gulped.

"_I know where you live_," she whispered, sending a shiver down Tsuna's spine, and hung up.

The phone remained frozen in his hand. He sat for a moment, staring blankly at the floor, until Reborn leapt onto the bed with a "Ciaossu," which practically startled Tsuna out of his skin. A few seconds later he settled down, bending his legs to his chest and crossing his arms over his knees. "You heard that?" he asked.

Reborn, who usually went the snarky route, simply nodded.

"What… do you think I should do?" Tsuna asked.

Then Reborn shook his head. "That's more of a personal issue, Tsuna. It's not in my jurisdiction to give you an answer for that," he explained.

Tsuna grimaced.

"But if I may make a suggestion:" Reborn said, "You and I both know someone who was in a situation similar to yours, who might be able to help you. In fact, I would recommend this person above all others for a conversation on this."

Tsuna leaned toward his tutor eagerly. "Really? Oh, awesome! Who?" he asked.

Reborn smirked. "…Gokudera."

Tsuna raised one eyebrow as his face contorted in confusion.

"Almost the same circumstances, even between the same families. P. liked him. She liked him a lot, for a long time. But he only considered her a friend. So he sat with her one day and broke it down, basically said that he values her friendship but doesn't return her romantic feelings. She still likes him, but she's healthy now and will get over him eventually – whenever she realizes that she's not going to get him no matter what she does – and, he's doing fine."

_Oh_, Tsuna had never even thought about that, but Reborn was right. Unlike Tsuna, who hadn't had a real relationship with anyone until recently (he didn't count his little stint with Kyoko, really, because the closest they ever came to being a couple was essentially a pity date, which was ruined anyway), Hayato had an _actual_ relationship history. Granted, he had never been as happy with anyone as he was with the Tenth; and he had to admit that his eight dates with the Tenth were in fact the most dates he had ever been on with one person; and the Tenth was different in every way from all his past partners because the Tenth started out as his friend and boss, and was male, and Hayato honestly loved him back. But nonetheless he was certainly more experienced than Tsuna was. The only drawback to discussing this with Hayato was the potential for awkwardness. Although Tsuna could restrain his boyfriend enough to keep things from getting out of hand, Hayato was the jealous type, and Tsuna still hadn't experimented much with the touchy subject of their romance yet. If something did go wrong, he didn't want the Shimon on his bad side again. He could picture the dreaded scenario in his head: an enraged Hayato attacking Enma, who would be avenged by Adelheid, except Hibari would probably defend Hayato less because they were friends and more because Hibari just loved a good old-fashioned brawl, and then Yamamoto would jump in, along with Ryohei, and Koyo would enter the mafia war to compete with Ryohei, plus Koyo would not stand by and let Adelheid fight by herself, and neither would Julie, and – gah, it would just be one big mess!

But he digressed. Smiling a little, he brought his back to the wall again. "That's a great idea, Reborn!" Tsuna said. "I can talk to him about that, then!"

Reborn eyed the iPhone Tsuna had unknowingly thrown halfway across the room. Thank the good Lord for Otter Boxes – otherwise Tsuna's poor phone would have been destroyed a million times by now. "Yeah, but, _maybe_ you should quit with the phone calls for tonight," he said.

Tsuna nodded. "You're probably right," he replied. Somehow, his mood had moved instantly in an upward direction with Reborn's reassurance. This only lasted a moment, however, when he sensed the dark twinge in his tutor's expression.

"Oh, by the way, Reborn," Tsuna said. He tried to perk up the shadowy air around the two of them. Reborn's black eyes shot up at him. "I've been thinking about that new technique."

"You have?" Reborn grazed his teeth along his own bottom lip.

"Yes," Tsuna said. "We should go out and do some training sometime this weekend. I want to try again. This time I think I'll get it right."

"So you've decided to go through with it after all," Reborn remarked.

Tsuna nodded. "Like you said, if I learn it…" he was thrown a little off by the darkness that wouldn't leave his tutor's aura. "…I'll hardly have to worry about anything anymore…" his voice trailed.

In response, Reborn nodded smally, biting down harder on his bottom lip. Tsuna attempted a smile, but to no avail.

"Tsuna," Reborn said. Tsuna could feel a negative energy pulling them together and pushing them apart, from the deepest pit of his soul.

"_You remember our deal, right?" _

**LIV. Clouded visions. **

They sat down on the futon-couch. Yamamoto's grip on Gokudera's arm solidified. Gokudera, his lips clamped shut, trained his eyes on the cement floor.

Yamamoto strained to say something, many times, but every word died before reaching past his brain. Gokudera's appearance fully captured his attention. He looked awful, just awful – that thought became more powerful as the minutes ticked by. _Heavy gray bags under his eyes, hands that wouldn't stop quivering, frumpy oversized clothes, gaunt cheeks._ The details piled on, each more painful to see than the last.

"I can't sleep," Gokudera said weakly. Yamamoto refocused his vision in time to see Gokudera's eyelashes come together again.

"I can't eat. I feel weak. I'm even losing my hair."

His voice never rose beyond this shivering murmur. The confessions came out like a shallow stream: you wouldn't know that the stream cut through this dead-grass plain until in the corner of your mind you noticed your foot was wet.

Yamamoto unconsciously leaned in closer. "One at a time," he said in a soothing voice. "Answer this first. Why do you cut yourself?"

"Do you believe in God, Yamamoto?" Gokudera, his breathing ragged, slowly turned his head up to face his friend.

Yamamoto paused to consider the question, staring at the spot of blood on Gokudera's lip. "I'm Buddhist-Shinto," Yamamoto gulped, but he felt empty saying it. He had never been very devout, or even thought about religion. There was a time, years ago, when his mother had to fight breast cancer, that his family of three prayed to the gods and meditated and visited shrines and whatnot rather habitually. Once Mom's cancer went away, they sort of stopped. Mostly Yamamoto practiced this mix of nonspecific Buddhism and Shintoism because everyone around him did, or at least said they did. Pretty much every Japanese person he knew was this way.

"That's not the right answer," Gokudera breathed. "I asked if you believe in God, not what religion you practice. It's a simple yes or no question." His voice had little substance to it.

"To be fair," Yamamoto muttered, "I asked you a question first." But he put the thought aside. He'd play Gokudera's game, up to a point. It took him another moment of silence to answer the question. He found the words by observing the tiny vibrations of Gokudera's right hand. "Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I do."

"Do you believe God is forgiving or vengeful?" Gokudera asked. The light in his gray eyes flickered.

Yamamoto selected one answer, but then thought about it and turned it into another, which circled back to the first one; the process repeated and repeated, and his brain came close to short-circuiting before he said, "I don't know."

"I struggle with that question all the time," Gokudera said. His eyes drifted downward, and as they did Yamamoto somehow felt a little less heavy. "I'm a Catholic. I've been Catholic all sixteen years of my life, been reading the Bible since I started reading at all, went to Sunday school as a little kid, everything, and it still confuses me." If his voice weren't so quiet and strained, he might have just sounded angry with himself. "I tried to give up on it years ago – tried. Something kept me from fully renouncing Catholicism, and I don't know what, but it was successful. Ever since then I've been stuck in this limbo with it, a sort of halfhearted tug of war. I usually put it out of my mind, but it keeps coming back."

"What are you getting at?" Yamamoto asked impatiently.

Gokudera didn't respond to it. "Sometimes I think God is punishing me. Sometimes I think He's testing me. Sometimes I wonder if He's even real."

"Dera, _what are you saying_?" Yamamoto said, his voice firming.

Gokudera eyed him again. He blinked. His lip quirked. He looked exhausted.

"They started a few months ago," he exhaled, his eyes drooping.

"What did?" Yamamoto asked. Now that he was finally getting somewhere, his tone of voice softened.

"The nightmares."

Yamamoto clenched his teeth, trying and failing to connect nightmares to any of this.

"Or," Gokudera continued, and Yamamoto listened intently, "They're not so much nightmares as memories. Bad ones. They used to not be so bad. I'd get a nightmare every once in a while, and it had been that way for years. A few months ago, though, something changed. Now I get them every night. They even happen while I'm awake."

Gokudera's dull green eyes floated off to the side, almost guiltily, as he continued. "I feel trapped. I get lost in the memories. But they behave like dreams – like bad dreams."

"_That doesn't explain why you cut yourself." _

"It does," Gokudera wheezed. "When I'm asleep and the dreams come to me, I can't escape them, even by waking up." He paused, meeting Yamamoto's determined, copper-colored eyes. "You've had dreams, right, Yamamoto?"

"Yes, I have," Yamamoto said. He knew he experienced dreams just as much as every other person did; yet when he thought about it, he could not accurately recall a single one.

"You know, then, that when you're in a dream, it may not be reality, but it's reality to you while it's happening. It's all you know, all there is. But it's only in your head – there's actually not anything there, but you don't realize it. Most people don't realize that it was a dream until they wake up and they're back in real life." His voice trembled just as much as his body did.

"But your dreams aren't just dreams," Yamamoto whispered. "They're memories."

Gokudera nodded barely. "My dream doesn't end when I wake up. Day or night, awake or asleep, it doesn't matter. The nightmare-memories come to me and take away my whole mind." He sighed and gasped once, closed his mouth, quickly collected himself, and started again. "But I think you know this too, it's not really the waking up that ends the dream, it's the feeling that you're alive. In a dream, you feel no pain, but in reality…

"You do. That's the biggest difference between what's real and what's not – that the real stuff causes you pain. And I want to get back to reality."

Yamamoto's heart ascended to his throat. His hard eyes felt slightly wet. His fingers pressed firmer into Gokudera's jacket sleeve. "So, you mean…" He could not finish the sentence himself, but the thought was all too clear.

_Gokudera cut himself because it caused pain, and pain meant that he was back in reality and the nightmare was over. _

The silver head bobbed slowly up and down, a nod that just kept going. His silent lips quivered, still stained with blood, as he leaned weakly against the back of the couch. Yamamoto's hand gave a final squeeze, then slid off his arm, dropping to the cushion.

"Some days are better than others," Gokudera breathed. "It still hurts all the time, though."

"There's no other way to get you to wake up?" Yamamoto asked.

Gokudera's eyelids dropped. He breathed deliberately, deeply. "I've tried, Yamamoto. I've tried setting alarm clocks. I've tried fighting it. Nothing works but this." His eyes opened ever so slightly. "Believe me, I didn't want it to come to this, either." For a fraction of a second, his face contorted to look like tears would fall, but his eyes remained shut and dry. He released a sigh and whimpered. His entire body, frail and fatigued, creaked and struggled to breathe as he sat like this for several minutes, the density of his headache increasing. Yamamoto stared at him, feeling numb, realizing that this broken body before him was his friend's innermost self and wondering what he just got himself into. A thought sparked in the middle of the sea of numbness, and Yamamoto steeled; his arms stretched the small distance between the two of them, and he grabbed the weary Gokudera by the shoulders.

"Listen to me, all right?" Yamamoto said, scowling, as Gokudera's eyes opened. The helpless, desperate, fragile look on Gokudera's face only served to strengthen Yamamoto's resolve.

"I loveyou." Yamamoto felt as though his entire heart were pouring out of his mouth with the words. "I mean, I _love_ you; I don't love you the way Tsuna loves you, but – you –" He gulped down a shudder "—you know. You get what I'm saying." He bit his tongue, scolding himself for tripping over his words so much. He inhaled deeply through the nose and decided to keep talking. "You're my best friend, Hayato Gokudera, and I'm your best friend too. You told me yourself. Do you not remember?"

"I remember," Gokudera breathed. The blurry mental image came to him of _the party held after the real Inheritance Ceremony, not the one the Shimon family botched. The new official Vongola Guardians and their friends had crashed a local bar. It was a little after midnight, the music still blaring and bodies still moving. Gokudera, who, even with the age limits, never even dared to drink alcohol, sat quietly on a bar stool in the corner, observing all the activity, sipping his fourth club soda, having a decent time despite being the only fully sober person there. Yamamoto, who had had a little bit to drink but still had most of his wits about him, stumbled over to his Storm Guardian friend and sat next to him. The two of them got to talking, one subject begot another, and somehow it led Gokudera to lean over and whisper, "Just between you and me, I consider you one of my best friends." _Gokudera thought that he himself was more apt to remember that night than Yamamoto was, but the latter could still surprise him.

"Yeah," Yamamoto said, "Exactly. And as your best friend, I care about you. I sincerely do. You mean a lot to me. Not just to me, to a lot of other people, too, actually: to sempai, to Chrome, to Lambo and I-Pin and Fuuta, and Dino and Reborn and Basil and your sister, and more, and especially to Tsuna. You work hard and you do your best for all of us. You're at the foundation of this Family and this wide network of friendship. You don't even know. I don't think you realize how much we care about you back. And yet…" He paused, catching himself before his voice began to waver. "You're our rock, and if you're not there for us to stand on, then everything will just fall apart. You're important to us, to our whole world, and we need you. You can't let yourself go, you just can't, because that would mean letting everything else go." He grimaced. "I'm saying this and I don't mean to guilt-trip you, Gokudera. I'm just making this up as I go along. I'm trying to find a way to get you to – to _listen_." His voice cracked. He repressed the fast-oncoming urge to break down into tears. He didn't even want to think about the first, last and only time he had cried in front of Gokudera, _the day of his first hit. He came home after the kill and sobbed wildly, regretting every step he took along the way to this mafia career. Haru and Ryohei sat beside him for hours and cried and cooed and attempted to console him. Yamamoto didn't show any signs of stopping until Gokudera came in. Haru explained what was going on. Gokudera exploded into anger – not in his normal way of shouting and spraying explosives everywhere, but an eerie, dark anger, honestly much scarier than any reaction Yamamoto had seen him show before. His voice was a level and deep growl, but his eyes brimmed with hellfire. "What's wrong with you? Quit crying. You're fine. Stop being such a big baby. My first kill was when I was nine years old, and I didn't cry even then. Dammit. Grow the fuck up." He turned around and left the room, stepping quietly, but slamming the door behind him. Yamamoto's eyes dried only a few minutes later, _though his best friend's coldness would nip at him forever. He had killed tens of people since and not shed one tear.

"I want to help you," Yamamoto said. He opened his mouth to speak more but stopped for a second when Gokudera panted out a cold, shaky breath. "I don't want to lose you, and I know you don't deserve the treatment you give yourself. But please, Gokudera."

Their eyes met and stayed locked on one another; the coherence in Gokudera's eyes nearly overtaken by the pain – the mask between the screams of sorrow inside Yamamoto's mind and the affirmative air outside of him thinning.

"You have to _let_ me help you. It's clear you can't do this alone. I can't do it alone either because it's you, not me." Yamamoto now simply stopped trying to hold back his desperate, pleading tone. "You have to promise me that you're going to stop cutting yourself, that you're going to find a different way, a more healthy way to get rid of your nightmares."

Gokudera shuddered subtly and closed his eyes, his expression unable to hide a surge of pain from within him.

"Promise!" Yamamoto found himself shouting.

Recognizing a bitter taste that had formed on his tongue, Gokudera felt the taste of blood trickle up his throat to the back of his mouth. His chest caved with an exhale and seemed to not recover. All over his body his skin crawled, becoming cold and clammy, then going numb. His lips had fallen slightly ajar – the blood hit the inside of his cheek, pooling against his gums. Slowly it poured into the corner of his lips. It climbed over the curves. A fresh stripe of blood ran down, stopping at his chin to gather and then taper off into tiny droplets that fell on his shirt. His vision blackened from the peripherals inward. Distantly he could hear his friend panickingly call his name. His eyes gradually slid to a close –

Yamamoto shook Gokudera violently, his friend's head knocking back and forth on his weakened neck. Suddenly everything came rushing at him – the lights, the air, the headache, Yamamoto's face, the worried cat seating herself at his feet, the unnerving warmth of the blood oozing out of his mouth.

"_Io…" _he gurgled, but he stopped there. Yamamoto's eyes widened. Gokudera swallowed weakly, soundlessly. He strained to move his arm, brought his right hand to his mouth, and scraped the rough texture of the bandages across his lips and chin. His eyes closed definitively. The blood, smearing slightly on his skin, stained the white fabric red. His right hand fell to his chest, directly over his shirt, over the X-shaped scar on his skin, over his heart. He opened his eyes again and pointed them in Yamamoto's direction.

"_Io prometto… sulla la tomba di mia madre_," he said, the music of his native language coming out somber through his lips. He repeated it in Japanese so Yamamoto understood: "I promise on my mother's grave."

Yamamoto sighed in relief, a wet sparkle blossoming in his eyes. The smallest of smiles added a hint of light to his face.

"If."

The smile disappeared. Yamamoto gulped before repeating the word shakily, feeling heavy again. He released his tight grip on his friend. "'If'?"

"If you promise you won't tell the Tenth, or anyone else," Gokudera said.

A hot, heavy, rocklike feeling welled up in the pit of Yamamoto's stomach.

**LV. On my honor. **

(Over a little less than the next two months, Takeshi Yamamoto would keep his promise.

(Hayato Gokudera, however, would not keep his.)

**LVI. Something bigger than the both of us. **

Saturdays sucked – or, specifically, every other Saturday. Yamamoto hated it. Nami Middle's policy was so stupid. Nothing was ever done on those half-days anyway. It was just a day of waking up early the sixth time in a row, receiving graded papers, and socializing, until the bell would ring at 11:30 and students poured out every possible orifice of the building so they could be free and enjoy their weekend already.

At least he had something to look forward to once school got out today. He happily jiggled his front right pants pocket to emit the sweet sound of several yen in coinage. Yamamoto himself had organized the plan himself via mass-text last night. He, Ryohei, Tsuna, Kaoru and Koyo were going to spend their afternoon at the arcade. (Fuuta and Gokudera were also invited and said maybe they would join in, maybe.)

While trying to occupy his mind with the sure-to-be-fun moments of the near future, yesterday's transpiring between him and Gokudera kept prodding into his thoughts. Last night, as he had waited tables to help his parents during the dinner rush, enjoyed a late meal with his family and texted with Kaoru into the wee hours, he debated on returning to Gokudera. He would think of what had just happened after school between the two of them; think of how Gokudera must be so broken and lonely right now in that tiny apartment; think of what a bad friend he was for leaving Gokudera alone to suffer more; think of grabbing his house keys and a clean uniform for the morning and just bolting out of here, back to Gokudera's place, to spend the night in close vigilance. But a promise was a promise. Yamamoto had no right to interject in Gokudera's own private healing process. The guy could handle things himself. He said he would. Gokudera wasn't normally the type to go back on his promises. As concerned as Yamamoto felt, he needed to repress his urge to overbear and just let things go for now.

**LVII. Oh well, whatever, never mind. **

Tsuna looked over his shoulder again and finally saw Hayato and Yamamoto approaching down the sidewalk from the same direction. Once they got within earshot, closer and closer by the second, Tsuna decided to give the news.

"Hey, Hayato, Yamamoto," he said, "I talked to Romario-san this morning, and he—"

Hayato put his finger under his boss' chin, lifted it, and kissed him, long and deep and warm and like his very survival depended on it. Tsuna complied with the kiss the instant Hayato's lips hit his. His eyes shut. His foot rose a few inches in the air. Yamamoto stood there for a moment, blinking away from his two best friends, stifling an unsure smile, until he walked off to talk to Chrome.

When they were finally done, they came apart, looked each other in the eyes, and Tsuna's face was a nearly inhuman shade of red. In a few seconds his breathless shock would wear off and be replaced by a grin that spanned ear to ear.

"I'm sorry," Hayato said, talking with his hands as he usually did. "I'm… I didn't mean to interrupt you. I am terribly sorry. G-go ahead."

A little slow to respond, Tsuna chuckled once or twice. "U-um, Romario-san said. Dino-san. Has given the okay to. Ah. Go through with that. Contract. W-with the Armando Famiglia."

"Great!" Hayato said, smiling sweetly. His eyes brightened as he looked to the clear sky above him. "That's… great."

"Hey," Tsuna said. Hayato looked back down but before he could respond, Tsuna pulled on his boyfriend's necktie to bring his head down and return a big kiss. Tsuna threw his free arm around Hayato's shoulder, deepened the kiss, and swayed back and forth slightly as he brought his other arm up around the shoulder. Hayato lightly set his left hand on Tsuna's hip.

Hana whistled back at the couple. "When you two are finished, we kind of have to go to school," she called. Yamamoto chuckled; I-Pin, Lambo, Fuuta and Chrome didn't pay much attention; Kyoko nervously picked at the hem of her blouse, tucking it in and out of her skirt; Ryohei pumped his fist in the air with a boisterous and mischievous laugh.

The kiss faded out with a tiny moan from both boys. Gokudera turned his head to the side while Tsuna let go of him. "Coming!" he shouted. He took Tsuna's right hand in his left and the pair walked to catch up to the rest of the group.

"Oh, m-my, Gokudera-kun," Kyoko said, "What happened to your hand?" She pointed to her friend's right hand, around which grayish-white bandages were wrapped several layers thick. Everyone else's eyes instantly gravitated toward the wound. Mixed murmurs of "Are you okay?" and "Omigosh, what happened?" and "That looks like it must have hurt!" filled the air. Even Tsuna looked sulkily to his side and mentally kicked himself for not noticing such a thing.

Gokudera sighed. "I just did something really stupid and broke it. But I'm fine. It's totally not the first time I've gotten hurt."

Yamamoto scowled a tiny bit, but only Gokudera noticed, out of the corner of his eye.

"Let me see it," Ryohei said. Hayato let go of Tsuna's hand and took a few steps forward as the boxer came to him. Ryohei took Gokudera's bandaged hand in his and examined it with a throaty, exaggerated hum. "Youch," he finally said, and he let it down. "Nice one, Octopus Head." Tsuna returned to Hayato's side, clasping both of his small hands around Hayato's bandages.

"I'm fine, you guys, really," Gokudera groaned.

Tsuna raised Hayato's hand and stroked his thumb along the side of one of the outer bands.

"How will you write?" Fuuta asked.

Hayato chuckled. "You know, the kind-of-cool thing is, I'm actually ambidextrous," he said. Everyone smiled at him. By now they had all gathered in a lopsided circle around him.

"I never knew that," Ryohei said. He shook his head quickly. "Wait, that's that word that means you can do stuff with both hands, right?"

Gokudera nodded. "Very good, Turf Head," he said jokingly.

"How'd you get to be that way?" Ryohei asked.

"Well, it's a funny story," Gokudera began. "I'm naturally right-handed, like most people are. When I was five years old I jumped off the roof of a tool shed – don't ask why – and landed oddly and broke my right arm in three places. Had to keep it in a sling for about six or seven weeks. So I used that time to learn how to write and draw and stuff with my left hand. Obviously my right hand is fine enough now – well, not at the moment, but you know what I mean – but I alternate between using my right and my left. Being able to write with either hand is a useful skill to have, I think."

"Yeah, it is," Fuuta said, and I-Pin said some Chinese thing, and the group started walking toward the school again, slowly.

"I always thought you had to be born ambidextrous," Kyoko mused.

"You can do anything if you practice enough," Gokudera said. "You know what's interesting, though? My father is left-handed."

"Ooh!" Yamamoto waved his arm in the air as if he had to be called upon. "Something else interesting, and don't ask me why I know this, but Hibari is left-handed too."

Gokudera chuckled. Meanwhile Tsuna, who was right-handed, coiled the fingers of his dominant hand around Hayato's left knuckles and squeezed.

"Lambo-san can use both hands! And his feet!" Lambo exclaimed. He started walking rigidly, like a mummy. Fuuta laughed by his side.

"I wish I was left-handed," Kyoko murmured to Hana and Chrome. "It's kind of special, you know? Different." Chrome nodded and Hana smiled sideways.

Gokudera spoke again, Tsuna, Yamamoto and Ryohei beside him turning their heads to face him. His voice was slightly hushed, though not for any reason. "My arm fractured near the growth plate – at the elbow – and because of the damage there, my right arm is slightly shorter than my left. Just slightly. You would have to look pretty closely to tell, but still."

Ryohei whistled. "Weird," Yamamoto said. Tsuna just walked quietly in some sort of awe. In his mind he tried to count how many blocks there were between them and the school right now, all the possible times for he and Hayato to break away from the group so they could discuss something privately. Everyone kept walking and opportunities kept passing them. He felt only a little nervous, though the feeling was growing.

"Oh, man, you won't believe some of the anecdotes like that that I could tell," Gokudera said. "Like when I got stabbed. Or my first time driving. Or how I got this piercing." He pointed his stiff right hand at a small diamond stud, second one up in his left ear lobe. "All completely true," he added as a disclaimer, "But not meant for today." He became mostly silent for the rest of the journey to school.

Grinning, Ryohei rubbed his nose, the white BandAid over the bridge crinkling with his skin. "Did I ever tell you guys about how I got this scar?" he said, running his fingertip down the line that crossed his eyebrow.

"Yes," the three other boys said in unison. They began laughing, and Ryohei joined them, and Lambo joined them too even though he wasn't really a part of the conversation.

Gokudera seemed to be in easy spirits this morning, and that made Yamamoto happy. He hoped that the feeling was genuine, that it was indeed a sign of good things to come for his friend. Maybe the talk yesterday had helped after all. Providing that, he pushed even the tiniest of notions on telling Tsuna and the others clear out of his mind.

Tsuna looked ahead at Kyoko's back. Her honey-colored hair glistened in the sun. Her short skirt swayed teasingly over her long legs with the movement of her hips. She was such a pretty girl. So pretty. His eyes lingered on her for a minute, regarding every detail of her that he could see from this angle, and finding with each addition that he still did not miss her.

Then he looked up at the boy to his immediate right, and all the noise of the conversation around him seemed to drown away. Kyoko was so pretty that not entirely too long ago he thought her hypnotizing. Hayato was attractive to a superlative degree as well, but he actually mesmerized Tsuna, demanded and held captive his full attention without even trying. Kyoko used to have this same effect on him. Now things were different. And in this moment of contemplation, Tsuna realized by himself just what he was going to say to Enma.

**LVIII. "'Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children.'" **

**(A/N: If you can tell me what book this quote is from, I'll give you an imaginary muffin.) **

"I'm sorry." This must have been the hundredth time he had said the phrase in the past few minutes.

Enma Kozato, normally shy even amongst friends, had successfully kept his eyes from wandering to his feet during the conversation. His half-lidded red eyes flickered from underneath the shadow of the Nami Middle School building. He nodded at his friend. "It's okay," he said. He enunciated firmly, a break in the pattern of mumbling everything. "I understand. It's my fault anyway."

"It's not your fault," Tsuna replied, "Not at all. Don't you think that for a second."

Enma bit the inside corners of his lips. "We…we're still friends, right?"

"If you still want to be," Tsuna said.

Enma nodded again. The boys smiled timidly at each other. "I'll try not to be so weird," Enma began, but Tsuna stopped him by putting his hand up.

"Remember, I said I acknowledge your feelings but I don't return them. You don't have to apologize for a thing. And I know how hard it is to love someone who doesn't love you back – from experience." The corner of Tsuna's mouth quirked.

The fragile smile on Enma's face deflated and his eyes darted off to the side before being cast downward.

"It hurts," Tsuna added after a few seconds of silence. "I know it hurts. In every way. I loved Kyoko Sasagawa for years: whenever she smiled at me, my heart would explode, whenever I saw her, I couldn't bear it and would have to turn away. The simple thought of her just made every part of me hurt."

Enma nodded slowly, with his eyes closed. Tsuna continued in the meantime.

"Believe me, I understand how you feel. I suffered through it. I was hooked on Kyoko-chan for a long, long time. For most of that long time, she didn't even really know who I was. But, you know, that's the thing: I _loved_ her like that in past tense. Things are better now. She and I are friends, and we always will be friends. We understand each other on a deep level. We know our boundaries. We respect one another completely. I've moved on to loving someone else mutually and I'm happy. She can get on with her life, too." He felt no regret in speaking of her. He had expected the subject of his unrequited former love for his Sun Guardian's sister to give him goosebumps or make his heart sink, but somehow he remained unfazed throughout the conversation.

Just then, the iPhone in Tsuna's back pocket vibrated and pinged twice. He reflexively reached behind him and stuck his thumb between the phone and inside fabric of the pocket, but didn't answer. It was only a text message. The other person could probably wait a minute or two. If someone needed him urgently, he would have been called.

Enma mustered enough will to smile weakly, shuffling his right foot a few inches outward. "How does it feel?" he asked.

"What?" Tsuna was confused.

"How does it feel to have someone love you back?"

Tsuna paused. He considered his friend's expression. Broken but determined. Hurt but already healing. Fallen but willing to stand. He tried to count how many times he had seen and made that face.

"There are plenty of people who love you, Enma-kun," he said. "It may be in a different way than you mean, but trust me when I say you are not alone. You will know what it's like eventually to love someone who loves you back. That day will come. I'll let you come to it yourself. Giving up on love is as bad as giving up on life. Love destroys you slowly when you feel it, but it is even worse when you don't love at all."

Tsuna stepped forward and grabbed his friend by the shoulders, facing him dead in the eyes. He sensed Enma's breath hitch.

"Things change. Today may not be your day. There are evolutions and there are revolutions. But you can never give up. Don't stop, don't hesitate, don't look back until the day you die. Okay?" Tsuna squeezed his hands tighter around the lithe pair of shoulders.

Enma ground his teeth, blinking rapidly, his smile growing like sunbeams cutting through thick clouds. "Okay," he said.

Tsuna let go of his friend only to wrap his arms further, going around the top of his torso, and leaning in close. He patted his back lightly once, twice. Enma exhaled into the hug. His tired eyelids dropped like stones. His heart beat wild, and Tsuna's warmth made his skin tingle, and his lungs wheezed while breathing the same air, and he recited in his mind, _Letting go is not giving up, This too shall pass, Letting go is not giving up. _

The iPhone vibrated and pinged again, seeming to signal the end of the embrace.

"Thank you for understanding," Tsuna said. "I'll always appreciate you."

"Yeah," Enma said. The bosses nodded at each other, and Enma shuffled away, around the corner of the school building. Tsuna put his hand on his phone again. He finally took it out when he saw Enma again, this time in the distance, walking along the pathway leading off the Namimori Middle campus.

He tapped the big circle button with his thumb. The screen lit up to a pop-up alert, _Text (2)_,both from_ Hayato Gokudera_, over the background photo he had snapped a few months ago of Natsu curled up for a catnap at the foot of his mother's bed. He unlocked the phone and immediately tapped the _Messages_ icon. Dropping his left hand to his side, he read carefully over the gray bubbles on the left side of the screen.

_Hey - rain check on arcade. (mind telling Moto?) Not feeling so hot._

Then the second, more recent one read:

_But when you're done there, think you could meet me somewhere?_

Tsuna blinked, turning the phone on its side to type out his reply.

_K. where do yu have in mind?_

He pressed the button on the top of the phone to lock it, stuck it back in his pocket, picked up his backpack that he had left leaning against the brick wall and slung the bag over one shoulder. Tsuna had barely taken a few steps toward the gate when his phone buzzed again. He checked it right away.

_My apt. building has a playground for little kids but it's usually deserted anyway. Is it OK to meet there? _

Tsuna couldn't quite remember when he had started typing his smiley faces backwards, but it was rather unique, he thought, and others had commented on it before.

_Yeah (:_

He put the phone away and took one step and there was already another reply from Hayato.

_Cool. The bldg is kinda on the outskirts, across the street from a WWII memorabilia store & a bus stop. You'll know it when you see it - 7 stories w/ a dark red awning over the front entrance._

His thumbs flew across the tiny touchscreen keyboard.

_I'll b ther rite after rcade games then (: (: probly round 5:30 or so. I brought alot of __¥ haha it'll take awhile_

He smiled to himself as he thought about the near innumerable amount of coins hidden in the inside pouch of his backpack when he received two text messages at once. First he checked the one from his boyfriend:

_Have fun. See ya later!_

Then he saw that the second was from Enma. He hesitated for only a second before reading it, afraid of what it might say.

_Thank you for being such a good friend all this time._

He squinted at it, unsure of what to make of the message at first. He typed out his response slowly.

_Back atcha. U ok?_

There was never an answer. Tsuna thought nothing of it.

0o.o0o.o0

Evening air, darkening in the weary sun, felt soupy against Tsuna's skin. The sidewalks were crowded and there were more cars on the street here than in central Namimori. He very rarely traveled to this part of town and walked now with small steps, clutching his jacket shut over his chest, glancing back and forth to make sure he was headed in the right direction. It wasn't that this area was dangerous, just that he didn't usually have a reason to come here, and the foreignness made him a little uncomfortable. This was where he said he would go after hanging out with his friends, though, so he could not turn back. He kept Hayato in the forefront of his mind, and the longer he took, the more he itched with impatience.

The moment Gokudera saw the tip of the Tenth's long shadow approaching the building, he smiled lightly, stood from the plastic swing, and sauntered over to the fence. From the outside, the gate into the small playground would only open if someone entered a certain passcode into the number pad. It would be easier to let the Tenth in if he simply unlatched the gate from the inside – and so he did when the Tenth got close enough.

Tsuna peered up at Hayato's face at an angle. He looked washed-out in the pre-sunset light. His hair had been collected into a sloppy ponytail.

"Hi," Tsuna said, unable to stop himself from smiling. Hayato took the backpack Tsuna still had from school that morning and set it down gently in the sand, propped up against the metal bars of the fence. Tsuna closed the gate behind himself. He remained in uniform as he had gone straight from school to the arcade to this playground, but Hayato had obviously had time to change into Toms, ripped-up jeans, a T-shirt with the Beatles' _Abbey Road _album cover on it, a faded maroon hoodie and three or four long necklaces.

"Hey," Hayato said. He bent down slightly and they quickly kissed. "How was the arcade?"

"Pretty fun," Tsuna replied. "Aoba and Ryohei spent almost the whole time on some motorcycle game, racing each other. Fuuta ended up coming and brought one of his other friends from school. I got the third high score on _Street Fighter_. Yamamoto aced a hard song on _DDR_. And Mizuno-san got nachos for us."

"Sounds like a good time." Hayato gestured toward the swing-set and led the Tenth there. Tsuna sat on the swing in the middle. Hayato sat next to him, holding the chain at shoulder-level with his left hand.

"What about you?" Tsuna asked. "You kind of just left right after school. What have you been doing?"

"Napping," Hayato replied with a small eye-roll at himself. Actually, he had left school immediately because he wanted to stop at the hardware store before the owner went on his lunch break. His goal was to repair his broken medicine cabinet today. It had taken him less than two hours to make it good as new, so he spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping. Therefore, he figured, it was not a lie. The freshest little slice on his arm stung dully, aching for the exposure that he refused to provide.

Tsuna chuckled. "Yeah, I'm pretty tired, too. It's been a long week."

"It has." Hayato had sighed the words out.

The boys sat on the swings for several minutes stretched in silence. Tsuna watched his shoes scrape against the ground as he swayed gently to and fro, eventually lifting his gaze to Hayato, who kept his own eyes on the fleeting cirrus clouds overhead.

Right now tiredness sought to claim Hayato's eyes, making each blink longer and heavier, but something kept them from shutting for too long, something important that forced his eyes open. Tsuna sensed it. That must have been why he was called here. He considered the possibilities for a moment, began to feel nervous for some reason, and settled by deliberately brushing the worrisome thoughts aside and focusing on his boyfriend's face.

And how beautiful of a young man Hayato was; how infinite Hayato's mere earthly body could be. His calm profile cut a pleasant shape into the sunset: narrow forehead, celestial-shaped nose, thick lips, fairly pointed chin, and long and elegant neck with a rather mature Adam's apple. His soft silver bangs swept down both sides of his face. His skin was like porcelain, flawless and smooth and pallid.

In about the first two years of their relationship, he had seen the boy brim with energy, beam with joy, fume with rage, darken with gloom, and quiet with thought. Until their friendship had turned to romance, however, Tsuna had never seen him so at peace as when it was just the two of them together. Hayato would develop a pure smile – small and tremulous and unsure, but genuine, true – and the look of contentment on his face would bring an essence of life to his ashen appearance. He was attractive all around, but Tsuna thought this expression suited him best.

Tsuna pitted Hayato's appearance against his own and almost instantly felt disgusted with himself. He had a tiny neck comparable to a toothpick, ears that stuck out just a little, a weak chin, a small mouth that was too far down from his snub nose, chubby cheeks, and giant eyes that dominated his face and once prompted someone to ask if he had a thyroid problem, which he didn't (if he did, he thought, he'd probably be a lot taller than this diminutive stature); not even considering his crazy brown hair with a mind of its own, and not a very bright mind at that; sometimes he thought he looked like a little kid, sometimes a girl, sometimes a monkey, sometimes a mouse, rarely the confident and successful young man he really was. Truthfully, he wasn't repulsive, ugly, or unsightly – just average. Even though he almost always felt _below average_.

But one thing Tsuna knew quite well was that appearances could just as easily captivate as deceive. Cold and aloof Kyoya Hibari loved small animals. Lal Mirch, with a drill sergeant tone of voice, pair of harsh penny-colored eyes and deep scar on her right cheek, cried like a baby every night. The smug Reborn was capable of feeling fear. Mukuro Rokudo's perpetual smile misrepresented the darkness constantly toiling in his mind. Tsuna himself was a downright wimpy kid who had single-handedly won many a battle with the fire inside him – and in contrast, the respected, intimidating Tenth Vongola Boss whom so many people feared was actually a sensitive human being.

The boy next to him, who appeared relaxed, was really not relaxed at all. His head (which seriously _hurt_) was filled with racing worries and ideas that coincided and expanded and canceled each other out. Which again brought back to Tsuna's mind the gravitational anxiety that there was something the boy he loved needed to say yet had not said. Tsuna blinked and stared back down at his feet. The tension built.

Hayato's eyes strayed from the natural light show. "Tenth," he said quietly, as though it were part of a running thought and had just slipped out without his knowledge. The solitary word passed his lips and disappeared into the atmosphere just as quickly. Outside the fence, a line of cars drove into the parking garage underneath the apartment building. Most of the drivers were men returning home after a long Saturday of work.

"Why did you ask me to come here?" Tsuna said. His relatively flat voice hid the mess of emotions colliding inside him. Both of his hands weakly grabbed the chains on either side of him. He halfheartedly kicked off, starting the swing backward, but dragged the toe of his shoe in the sand to stop the motion.

Gradually Hayato turned his head to the side. Tsuna brought his head up and turned it as well, meeting his eyes. Tsuna's eyes still showed the flashes in the darkness of the arcade. Hayato's smile was warm, but his cheeks were drawn, and his eyes seemed sunken, forlorn. His face brightened enough to temporarily ease his boss when he spoke.

"There could be a lot of reasons why I asked you to come here," Hayato said. "The real reason is just because I wanted to tell you that I love you."

Tsuna's chin tilted upward somewhat.

Hayato's smile spread, also growing shakier. His eyes darted off for but a second before they reunited with Tsuna's. "I know I've said it a million times before to you, and I've meant it every time. I just wanted to say it again."

The taste of bile mixed with blood tinged at the base of Gokudera's throat, but he swallowed it down. It reemerged every few minutes, and if the tickle lingered too long, it would have to come out. Either way, without fail, it made him weak. The sensation chilled him to his very bones.

He was a liar, a coward and a beast. He knew it – his entire body, mind and soul had been soaked in this despicable state. Usually he accepted it. Feeling so low all the time was in his nature. He hated himself and when it came to most people, he was fine if they hated him too.

_But, in the case of the Tenth… that was different. _

He did love the Tenth. With each and every fiber of his being. That was the unshakeable bittersweet truth within him. Though, he had never even seen what the Tenth saw in him. Perhaps he unknowingly possessed some inner light that drew his boss dangerously closer. Sure, Gokudera initiated their friendship to begin with, but honestly thinking to himself, they both might have been better off if the Tenth had rejected him just like everyone else did. Then the Tenth would not have such a burden to bear, and Gokudera could continue to suffer along the path to self-destruction without dragging anyone down with him. He realized that both of them were selfish – but unlike the Tenth, Gokudera actually knew what he was doing, thus shouldering much more of the blame for the wrongs of their situation. Gokudera had no right to be seen by the Tenth's eyes, hold the Tenth's hands, hug the Tenth's body, kiss the Tenth's lips, _breathe the Tenth's air_.

Suddenly he felt sicker, sicker as if he had not even been sick before. His own private hell was rupturing out of his skull and joining the underground, and an overwhelming weight descended upon him, and he sank and sank and sank and sank…

Tsuna reached out and stroked Hayato's cheek with the back of his closer right hand. The touch pulled Gokudera out of the abyss. He had not sensed his vision casting down; he corrected it by finding the Tenth's eyes again.

"I love you, too," Tsuna said, all four words thick with meaning.

_God_, that heartbreakingly earnest sparkle in his brown eyes, it grabbed Hayato's heart in a fist and squeezed the life out of it. Hayato's light-colored eyes, currently dyed scarlet by the sun, flickered downward because they couldn't take it, and after a second the eyelids shut over them. Hayato took his left hand off the chain and set it gently overtop the Tenth's.

Indeed Tsuna knew how it felt to be loved. He treasured every part of it, every part of his Hayato.

"I'm sorry," Hayato mouthed, eyes cracking open. Tsuna had caught the words, and promptly in response leaned over and pressed his lips fully over Hayato's. Both of their pairs of eyes closed as Hayato's fingers curled tentatively around Tsuna's hand.

Their mouths separated. "I'm sorry," Hayato repeated, this time adding sound to it, a soft, low voice rumbling up from some deep hole. Tsuna just kissed him again, going deeper and longer this time. When they broke apart, Hayato started once more, a pained moan, "I'm so sor—"

He got cut off when Tsuna placed his left hand over Hayato's mouth, fingers firm to keep anything from coming out. Hayato opened his eyes to find that Tsuna's had opened, too. Tsuna felt his own hot breath on his skin – their faces were so close still.

"I don't know what you're sorry for," Tsuna said sweetly at first, then his tone became surer, "But I don't want to hear any more apologies today." His eyes flicked upward, fully delving into the gray-green pools. The sun displayed its final, desperate flash over the distant horizon. "From you or anyone else."

A short moment had passed when Hayato closed his eyes and smiled into Tsuna's fingers before kissing them, as if to say, _Okay_. He vaguely detected a rusty metal taste to his boss' hand. Tsuna smiled.

Hayato was a beautiful person. Tsuna could feel it in his aura alone, and now in a more real sense in his right hand – the supple skin of Hayato's face under his fingertips, and the light, protective grip of Hayato's left hand.

Tsuna brushed his left hand across his boyfriend's mouth; first the fingers veering sideways, then trailing down the front of Hayato, dipping between his bottom lip and his chin, flowing past his jawline, slowing briefly over his Adam's apple, riding the curve of his neck, almost catching at his clavicle, finally stopping over the center of his chest, his palm flattening over the shirt to distantly feel the heartbeat underneath; Tsuna retracing a masterpiece while their lips came together for a kiss as passionate as it was gentle. To Tsuna, nothing felt more right. To Hayato, nothing caused more pain. Further for one and despite the other, the boys kissed again, again, again, again, the kisses somehow patient disregarding their sheer amount, each one lingering more than the last.

The rumble Tsuna felt in his back pocket seemed to arrive in protest, amplified by the plastic seat of the swing. A pinging sound accompanied it. The boys sighed out of their kiss, a seamless but unwanted end. Their eyes opened to the shallow darkness and regarded the solemn shivering light remaining in each other.

Leaning out of the seat a few inches, Tsuna withdrew his left hand from Hayato's warm chest and took out his iPhone. Hayato clenched Tsuna's right hand a little more and pressed it further against his cheek. Tsuna had just gotten a text message from his mother.

_Tsuna come home 4 dinner asap_

Tsuna sucked in his wet bottom lip. He glanced back up at Hayato. "I have to go," he murmured.

_Don't go/Please go/Don't go/Please go. _The words echoed in Hayato's brain, a broken record on a broken record player. He nodded minutely, squeezing his boss' right hand once before bringing it to his lips. He kissed the palm. There arose that grotesque feeling in the pit of his throat again. He released Tsuna's hand weakly, dropping his own to his side as he and the Tenth stood, and he swallowed down the taste with a shudder.

Having replaced his phone in his pocket, Tsuna lurched forward and grabbed Hayato Gokudera, his lithe arms enveloping the latter's torso. The movement was so sudden, the grip so harsh that Hayato took in a sharp, silent gasp. He swore his heart stopped for a second. The foul flavor came back quickly, more pungent and demanding, but he ignored it, sliding his arms into an X over Tsuna's upper back, pressing the two bodies closer together.

In this tiny forever, Tsuna breathed Hayato's scent in like a drug, allowing it to wade through his whole bloodstream. The taste of him endured on his lips and tongue. The image of his perfect face burned into his mind. Hayato's voice, raspy from years of chain-smoking but still overpoweringly soulful and melodious, floated back and forth between his ears. He imagined the softness of the skin underneath Hayato's jacket and shirt as he clenched the fabric in his hands. Hayato was appealing to all measurable senses, certainly. His worth was even greater beyond that. Tsuna considered how lucky he was to have fallen in love with someone so beautiful.

"I… love… you…" Tsuna exhaled against Hayato's chest. Hayato gulped.

Tsuna's phone beeped again. Within a minute the two teens had prepared themselves for release, and in another minute their arms had disentangled and bodies separated enough for Tsuna to read the new message from his mom.

_now plz_

He sighed as he typed

_Coming_

and then locked his iPhone, clicked his tongue and looked up at Hayato. The thin blue mist of the early evening had surrounded them. Hayato smiled fleetingly down at him. They walked in unison toward the fence. Tsuna grabbed his backpack. Hayato unhitched the gate and held it open and Tsuna stepped to the threshold of it, but stopped and turned around and beamed at Hayato such a sickeningly sweet and hopeful smile.

"I made the right choice being with you," he said. "I don't think anyone else could make me as happy."

Hayato scoffed soundlessly, a smirk feebly threatening his lips just as another rotten bubble drifted up from his chest. He couldn't think of any way to reply – that was, not a way to reply without hurting the Tenth, at first. But his naturally brilliant mind could process thought very quickly.

"I love you, Tenth." He settled for this. "Good night."

"I'll talk to you tomorrow or something," Tsuna said. Noting but just as soon dismissing the sudden sallow look Hayato took on, he turned back around, went through the gate and disappeared down the sidewalk after only a minute. The foot traffic had thinned considerably, so the Tenth should not have had much of a problem getting home, Hayato thought.

Just as he started to shake violently. He flung his whole self toward the large trashcan near the back of the small playground, shoved the metal lid off the top (it landed upside down in the sand), and squeezed the sides as his head dipped down. The feeling couldn't be contained anymore.

He stood up straight and immediately slammed himself against the slide for balance. He panted roughly; his headache fissured; black and white spots waltzed in the air before him. The metallic twinge of blood had filled his whole mouth, completely eliminating any remnants of the Tenth's taste. He wheezed out a sigh, which turned into a cough that he covered with his jacket sleeve, which turned into a series of more, lung-wracking coughs. He looked blearily down at his blood-spattered sleeve and the thought crossed the back of his mind: _What am I going to do? _

**LIX. Keyhole. **

He had taken a series of strange turns, but he didn't care.

Hayato lumbered down the sidewalk anyway. The majority of the people had vanished from the streets, leaving him in thickening darkness. Homes bubbled with activity while shops and workplaces sat empty, but all buildings looked the same, lifeless and imposing, on the outside.

The fresh air did him good, giving him a solid feeling that he had not experienced in a while. It helped turn the tired gears of his brain.

_What is my perspective on this? _he thought. A disheveled-looking man ran past him in the opposite direction and darted into a 24-hour store, to buy bath soap or a condom or something, Hayato didn't know.

_I'm his right-hand man. My sole duty is to keep him happy, healthy and safe. But that's only a professional thing. Personally – and above all, I love him. I love him. I love him. I love him. I love him so much, so, so much. I love him and I need him. I needed him then, I need him now, I need him more than I've ever needed anything else. He means everything to me. I want him, I need him, I love him –. _

_Do I deserve him? _

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed his own reflection in a tinted window. He paused to study it for a few seconds.

_Absolutely not. _

He blinked at himself and frowned.

He had started this journey spontaneously, wandering out of the playground and going aimlessly from there. Hayato had heard from somewhere that the brain worked best when performing menial activities such as laundry and showering, so perhaps his subconscious was trying to get him thinking.

At any rate, his headache remained, his stomach and esophagus felt like they had been turned inside out and were now shriveling up, and one needlessly vigilant middle-aged woman had already asked if he was all right because he really didn't look well (he could see his own discomfort in his dim reflection) and there was blood on his jacket sleeve. The physical pain all over him felt like nothing compared to the emotional pain he had brought upon himself.

_I don't know how this will turn out, but I do know that I will only end up hurting him. _

He pulled his ponytail out of the band and tousled it about, giving his limp hair a scruffy look for a second. A few strands had jumped out of the bunch and they floated through the air, landing around his feet; the moonlight gave both the fallen hairs and the ones still clinging to his scalp a preternatural silver glow. His bangs had fallen halfway over his eyes. He slid the ponytail-holder around his wrist and kept walking in some direction.

_I should do what's best for the Tenth. What's best for him is not the best for me, but I don't care about myself at this point, and I've devoted myself to him and his cause far too deeply and far too long to let my own priorities top the Tenth's. _

His contacts were starting to bug him – he had had them in now for a little too long – he rubbed his eye out of impulse. A breath of wind came out of nowhere. It seemed to carry him around the corner at a crosswalk, disappearing when he walked halfway past a flower shop, which was closed, just like almost everything else around this time of day. He continued walking.

_But the Tenth's priorities have always been "friendship first, mafia second." We started in a professional, mafia relationship. It's stemmed out since then to his personal life and mine. We're not just boss and right-hand man, Sky and Storm Guardians; we're best friends, we're in love with each other. I myself can't choose the aspect of our relationship based on its origin – the Vongola part – over what it's become, or vice-versa. They're too closely intertwined. I care about the Tenth too much in either sense. Although when it comes down to it, if I think about the Tenth's preferred lifestyle, my role in the Vongola is easily dispensable. My role in his personal life, not so much. _

_In the Vongola, he depends on me for everything. I'm his go-to guy. I do normal second-in-command work and other things additionally, all the things the Tenth can't or won't do himself, which are admittedly a lot. I don't mind the extra work. I can handle it. I've always wanted it. I haven't noticeably slipped there, at least I don't think I have yet, but if Yamamoto's right, my inner problems will shut everything down if I don't get a rein on them. _

_My position as right-hand man doesn't mean as much to the Tenth, though, as my position as his boyfriend, and that's where I'm struggling. I'm a ticking time-bomb, and the shrapnel is aimed in that direction first. The Tenth loves me – at least I hope he does, at least he says he does – and I love him. He does not want to lose me. Best case scenario is, I can stick around for him. The chances for that are looking slimmer and slimmer, though. I want him, but I know deep down that I shouldn't have him. I'm not sure whether that will change. _

Eventually the surroundings kicked in for Hayato, filling his immediate attention. His legs started to feel heavy. And he was in the older Namimori district, a place where he and the Tenth had walked on their very first date. The dusty old buildings staggered down either side of the road. A bum sat carefully hidden in the shadow of an alleyway close-by. His fisherman's hat hung low over his brow – he seemed to be sleeping.

Hayato stopped in his tracks a minute, taking in the scenery. The pause allowed a cloudy thought to drift through the back of his mind. He started walking again, glancing at all the abandoned structures, as the thought worked and eventually defined itself into something readable. _Music shop_.

He turned his head to the side and saw, across the street, the old music shop that the Tenth had pointed out to him. The sign was totally dark now, but otherwise it looked the same. Hayato felt drawn to it. He kept staring at the store as he crossed the empty street, once narrowly missing a pothole. He stepped over the curb and onto the sidewalk one foot at a time. His neck was craned far upward. Slowly he brought his face to a normal angle. He skimmed over the storefront with his eyes. The bricks had faded, the grout was dirty. The two-by-fours blocking the window and door had rotted and chipped from years of wear and neglect. The awning was in tatters. A mouse hole peeked through the bottom of the weakened foundation, and a messy bird's nest sat at the edge of the tar roof, but it appeared that even the animal residents had left this place behind. Without thinking, Hayato reached his left hand out and grazed his fingertips over one of the bricks. It was a different color from all the others for some odd reason, though it still had the same shape and rough texture.

The music shop looked desolate, even atrocious. But something about it installed a feeling in the depths of Hayato's soul. In the profound darkness of this part of town, the shop stood alight.

Hayato traced the faces a few bricks, drinking in every bump and dint. "Somebody loved you," he whispered to the building, losing a smile that hadn't been there in the first place. In the distant back of his mind, where the constant pain resided and often overstepped its boundaries, he tried to conjure the image of the man who owned this place long ago, even though he hadn't the slightest idea what this man looked like. What did the Tenth say happened to him, again? He died, didn't he?

Drawing his hand back to his side, Hayato glanced in either direction and his feet began moving again. He sauntered over to the right side of the building, where it shared a large alleyway with what looked to be a former Chinese restaurant. The only thing back here, he saw as he stepped over the faded concrete, was a rusted Dumpster – both halves of its lid stood open, and the thing had long been empty save for a lucky colony of spiders. Someone, probably a gang member, had graffitied the word _fEArsOmE _in now-faded green along the sidewall of the music shop. The old restaurant had a mark to match.

He went around the back of the music shop. He thought it couldn't have gotten darker, but he had been wrong. He had to squint for a few seconds before his eyes began to adjust – his contacts screaming at him now – and spotted the back door to the shop. The wall around it was even barer than out in front. He headed for the door. It had just as many boards lying over it as had the front entrance.

Hayato took half a step backward. Brows furrowed. Feet planted on the compacted dirt. He hoped he still had the strength in him for this.

All at once his foot flew up in the air and crashed down on the boards. Some of the weaker ones broke and either dangled from the loose nails in the doorway or crashed to the ground. As for the rest of the boards, all except for the top ones had at least cracked on impact. His foot hurt only slightly – Toms were not good shoes for executing martial arts – but he figured that one, maybe two more kicks like that ought to do it. He wouldn't bother with the wood boards that were too high to reach.

The next kick got all the necessary boards out of the way but one. Firstly, he had to deal with extracting the large splinter now lodged in the back of his ankle, which didn't take long. Then he reached for the final unbroken board and split it apart with both hands. He smiled to himself. Up until this point, he had not recognized exactly why he was doing this. Now he definitely sensed the throbbing compulsion overshadowing all other feelings inside him to _get inside this building_. Nothing else mattered at this moment – the urge had consumed him and still hungered for more. He didn't know why he needed so badly to get inside that shop, but he didn't care to know, either. Honestly, Hayato had not been this excited about a non-Tenth thing in a long time. He had almost forgotten that he could feel this way.

The door opened inward, so he figured he could duck under the higher boards to get in. He brought his left hand to the doorknob, wrapping his fingers around it. He didn't even have to try to turn it, however, to know that it was locked. He frowned.

Not many people knew this, but Hayato was an expert at picking locks, a skill necessary to all good cat burglars like him. Sure, he didn't really need to know that stuff anymore, but he still remembered how to do it. Any lock and Hayato could break through it. Any. Seriously, go ahead, try him. He could even make it look like nothing had ever happened to it. (Hayato could also evade most security systems, and – this was largely irrelevant – keenly sense yet be immune to 98% of ingestible poisons.) This lock, right in front of him, was classic, easy: an older model of a simple deadbolt. _He just needed a damn picking tool._

He glanced about wildly at first, unsure of what to do. He had to get that door open, he _had_ to. Quitting now was unacceptable. If he couldn't get into this music shop, he would have just died right then and there.

When the idea struck him, he took off running into the alleyway, across the street, over to the slumbering homeless man in the shadows, who snored quietly. His clothes were covered in grass stains, complementing his overwhelmingly grassy smell. Hayato tiptoed around him, exceedingly cautious. On the ground beside the man, right there, was a freshly dry-cleaned dress shirt on a wire hanger. What business this destitute man had with such nice clothing, Hayato did not know, but it did not really matter. It was just convenient for him. He grinned widely. He carefully slid the hanger out of the shirt collar – freezing for a few seconds when the hobo stirred, continuing when he heard him snore again – and then snuck out of the alleyway, hanger in hand. "I'll return this later," he mouthed, even though he knew no one would hear him or care.

He straightened the hooked end of the hanger. He stopped his hands from shaking long enough to stick the end of it into the keyhole, putting his ear against the hollowed metal door. After three seconds or maybe even less of jimmying, he heard the affirmative _click_ that all lock-pickers loved to hear, smiled wider, and slowly pulled the wire out of the hole. He stood up straight, tucking the hanger under his arm, and attempted a second time to turn the doorknob. It rotated almost 180 degrees. He pushed against the door with his shoulder. It creaked open. Dust, paint chips and other tiny miscellanea cascaded down from the other side of the doorway. This door really hadn't been opened in years. His heart raced with anticipation.

Before he moved any further into the old music shop, he shut the door gently and ran back over to the homeless man – who was still asleep –, bending the wire into its original hook shape all the while. He didn't take as much care in slipping the hanger back into place. His heart pounded, expanding and contracting and swinging in all different directions as he sprinted back to the door.

He took in a lengthy breath, held it, released it, staring hard at the door. At that, he realized three, fairly inconvenient things. For one, the mere action of breathing reminded him that a cigarette would have felt really gratifying right about now. Secondly, his eyeballs burned in protest to the contacts he had had in since early this morning. And, he could feel blood slowly seeping into his mouth. Furrowing his eyebrows, he collected all the blood into one spot in his mouth and spat it onto the ground. This made him cough, however, multiple times, calling forth more blood, which in the end he decided to rid of alternately by swallowing it down hard, along with that annoying vomit-y feeling.

_He felt frustrated with his body, with himself. Couldn't he have at least one nice moment without feeling sick?_ Sighing, he stood in front of the door and leveled his head for a couple of minutes. Once he felt so relaxed that the throbbing of his headache began to take over, he shook off all jitters and negative feelings, grabbed the doorknob, turned it, and opened the door. He stepped over the threshold, dipping his head to avoid the lower wooden boards, and into a small room, filled with dust, cobwebs and mouse leavings, that had gone untouched and unseen by any other human being for years.

The wall about six feet in front of him had been slathered thickly with bright red paint and ruled with tens of shelves of varying distances apart, a few of which had broken down. Hayato shut the door behind him and found the unobstructed doorway out of this closet area. He walked through it into the main room. Plain eggshell walls, the large single-pane window with a single bullet hole in it at the front, tiled ceiling, wide-planked wood floor paled with dust, a lonely checkout counter at the back, unused display shelves. Dimensionally the room was also small, just a little smaller than Hayato's apartment, but with this neutral color scheme and lack of stuff lying around, it seemed huge. He breathed deep, the dust flying into him, bringing on a brutal coughing spell. He covered his mouth with his left hand and held his right hand to his chest. His lungs throbbed, but once it was all over he stood straight, gazing breathlessly at the ceiling, _42 and four-fifths tiles_, he knew the number at the slightest glance; a smile on his face. Not the cheesy grin he'd fake to reassure his friends, the cautious, sentimental smile he reserved for the Tenth, or the self-satisfied smirk he showed earlier in picking the lock.

He looked thrilled, cleansed; close enough to touch an absolute joy and wholeness unlike any other, like he had discovered a whole new world.

He stumbled backward a few steps, lifting his arms, his head thrown back. He sighed. One leg stepped sideways behind the other, and soon he was spinning in wide, uneven circles around the room, slicing through the darkness. He let out a laugh that echoed back into him from all directions, filling him with vibrations. He could feel his very heart beating.

Hayato began to fall backwards purposely, catching himself before he hit the hard ground, and immediately rolled onto his back. The dust waltzed in the air, just for him. His long hair spread into a whitish puddle beneath his head. His arms and legs lay outstretched limply at his sides. All the pain in his world, everything went away, and he closed his eyes.

**LX. Red bricks and rose-colored windowpanes. **

The froth from the espresso threatened to spill over the side of the cup until Reborn raised it to his lips for that first glorious sip. Drinking a fresh cup of espresso had become so rooted in his morning routine that he could scarcely function without it. He set it down on the saucer in front of him and sighed into the steam as he turned his black eyes toward the dull blue sky outside the window. He enjoyed that thick pre-sunrise feeling. He absentmindedly played with his necktie a little.

All at once, the sound of slippers shuffling along tile floor wafted to him. "_Buongiorno_, Reborn." Her voice sounded subdued, like she was not quite awake yet.

Bianchi sat herself at the other end of the kitchen table. Her eyes still swam with sleepiness. Her messy long hair draped over almost her entire back. Her nightgown had a white and pink Zebra-stripe pattern, faded from many washes. She was a beautiful young woman, but somehow even more so in the raw sense, right now, without any makeup.

Reborn didn't even bat an eye when she came into sight. He slowly turned his head in her direction. "And to you, Bianchi," he said. "How did you sleep?"

"In a bed," she said, "With my eyes closed." She smiled a little at the wit of her response.

Reborn smirked in return. "Nice. I slept on the floor, with my eyes open."

"Just as nice," she said, and she looked him up and down as far as she could see, and suddenly felt embarrassed that she was wearing the same thing she had slept in last night, in the presence of Reborn, whose hair was tucked neatly under a fedora and who looked just as polished and gallant in his suit as if he had been awake for hours. Maybe he had, she didn't know.

He sipped his espresso until it was almost gone, and the two of them watched the lightening air in silence all the while. A few minutes later, Reborn took a loud gulp. Bianchi sighed and peered at his face. The shadow under the brim of his hat seemed more commanding than usual. She looked into his vast black eyes. For most people, it was impossible to tell just what went on in the mind behind those eyes – but over the years she had gotten quite good at reading them. She could argue that she had developed a sort of sixth sense about him.

"You seem tense," Bianchi stated. She set her elbows on the table and crossed her forearms over one another.

He clenched his baby-teeth, wondering just what prompted her to say such a thing. True, he had a brutal storm of emotions and thoughts wreaking havoc inside his head. But no one was allowed to know that, by his personal standards. Not his fellow Arcobaleno, not his hapless student, not even his beloved. A hitman's mind was an enigma, and Reborn was supposed to be a hitman in its purest form.

But another truth, a more painfully apparent truth was, these were turbulent times for the Vongola and all people involved with it.

Reborn hated the fact that he couldn't be perfect on his own. He had neither asked nor accepted help from anyone, ever. If he could just find a way to unload his worries, get at least one thing off his chest so he could more easily untangle the web of obligations and identities that he had so intricately and so ruinously woven for himself… His pride would remain intact, right?

He loosened his jaw forcibly. "I am concerned," he said in his flattest voice. "Though, to be fair, you yourself have been rather ominously quiet the past few weeks."

"Just deep in thought is all. But what's wrong in Reborn-land?"

"Nothing's wrong," he said. "Like I said, I am only concerned." He paused a few seconds to finish off his espresso. When he looked up from the cup he saw that she had propped her arms up to rest her chin on her hands.

"I must admit I am worried about Tsuna. And I'm worried about your brother, too." He began to twirl his cup in circles on the saucer, pushing it around and around with his index finger up against the tiny handle. "See, Tsuna's about seventy percent through with inheriting his position as boss. My guess is that he'll officially be in charge of everything and have gotten the hang of it all three or four months from now. Because, you know, we decided that the best way for him to assume bosshood is gradually and not all at once, since the Vongola is so large and he's not exactly the most experienced person in the world, even with all the training I've given him."

"Right," Bianchi said quietly.

"Although things are relatively peaceful in the mafia world at the moment, the fact by itself that he has to take on all this responsibility has made things complicated, especially since he's so young. Tsuna is stressed. He's very stressed. I can tell – every time I try to read his mind, it's such a garbled mess I can't even form a coherent opinion of it. He's getting pushed and pulled in a million different directions. Budget this, peace talk that, paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. Not to mention everything going on at school. I want him to graduate, so it's not like I can get rid of that factor. Where would be the logical place for Tsuna to find solace?"

"His personal life," Bianchi answered.

"But that's just it. Everything's a mess for him even there," he said. "His dad's not around, his house is crowded, and all his friends are either in the mafia too or just could never understand. And the scariest thing is, Tsuna is so distracted, he can't see that his right-hand man, his boyfriend, your brother is falling apart. Tsuna of all people should be able to sense such a thing, but I think his subconscious mind is blocking it out, so he's either too distracted to see it or he's in denial. Gokudera has serious problems, though."

She grimaced. "I can attest to that," she said. "Hayato's always been somewhere along the path to destruction. You would know for sure if you grew up with him like I did. He was a strange kid; he's a strange teenager; he'll be a strange adult. It's a side effect of his high intelligence. But he's also a product of environment as much as anything else."

"What do you mean by that?" Reborn said, an eyebrow quirking.

"A lot of things." She shifted her weight onto one elbow, pressing on her cheek with her half-fisted hand. "Hayato is reckless, a thief, a fighter, a killer. Yet he's a good person. He really is. I know it. Hayato has a heart of pure gold, and he tries his best to put it in the right place."

"So what you're saying is, he's an inherently good person who has been through and done unspeakably bad things," Reborn murmured.

"Unfortunately," she said.

"Some are born into the mafia, some achieve the mafia, and some have the mafia thrust upon them," Reborn said. "Gokudera's a combination of all three of those things, except for one problem…:"

"His soul is not meant for that type of life," they said in unison.

"Tsuna is the same way," Reborn added. "Maybe that's why the two of them are so drawn to each other."

Bianchi frowned at that, though she didn't feel it. "Speaking of which, what do you think about that whole thing?" she said.

"Formally, I have no opinion of their relationship," he said. "While conscious control of whether, when and with whom a person 'falls in love' is controversial, Tsuna's decision to _act_ on his feelings is his own. It's personal. I'm only the objective force advising him on things concerning the mafia." He had recited the same thought so many times, to himself and to others, during the past few weeks, that he barely felt the words pass through his lips anymore.

She grunted softly in understanding. "Off the record?" she asked.

He only chuckled. "That's confidential." He pushed the saucer soundlessly off the placemat onto the wood grain of the table. "I'm curious about your own opinion, Bianchi."

The woman grew silent. Reborn gave her time to work out the pause by grabbing the cup and saucer, hopping off the chair, and walking toward the kitchen sink. He ascended the stepstool and gently placed both dishes low in the basin, with only a small sound.

"I don't know," she finally sighed the words out. "I'm having a hard time accepting the fact that my kid brother is in love with someone. I'm all for love in any sense, of course – it's not love itself that I have any problem with, and I don't mind homosexuality either, even though it's not exactly my own thing. Aside from that, I know we're separate people, and I know Hayato's an adult in every way except in writing. I respect him and his choices and his privacy. But…"

Reborn had turned to face her and now leaned his hand against the counter. She turned around in her chair to look at him. He noticed right now that while the siblings did have some differences in their features – i.e., Bianchi's forehead was wider and Hayato's face was thinner –, at the very least, they had the same eyes, with the same almond shape, gray-green color, moderate spacing and all. Albeit with different emotions to them – hers were dreamy and fiery while his were brooding and astute.

"Hayato is my _brother_. We may have different mothers, but he's still certainly my brother, or if not, the closest thing I've ever had to one. I just can't get over that." Her eyes took on a depressed look, the grayness intensifying. "I remember the day my parents brought him home from the hospital, after months in the NICU because he was born so early, and they let me hold him, and he was so tiny and cute. I watched him sleep. I read to him. I helped him take his first steps. I played the piano with him. I stood up for him in front of our cousins. My name, 'Alandra,' was one of his very first words." She swallowed something hard in her throat that had formed when a sentimental scowl brought color to Reborn's face, if for an instant. "And as if all those cliché brother-sister moments aren't enough. He performed the exorcism when Mukuro Rokudo possessed me. He tolerated all those experiments I performed on him. I held him in my arms when he overdosed on prescription pills when he was seven – his first suicide attempt, can you believe? He did it completely on purpose, with the intention of dying. Seven years old. No seven-year-old should ever think like that. None. – and I took care of him, and told our parents in time to take him to the hospital. I witnessed the first time that Mom—…." She stopped there.

Reborn grimaced solemnly. "I had a hunch that was what happened," he said. Bianchi, who found all the sudden that the subject of her past with her half-brother caused her physical pain in the throat and chest and even the stomach a little, returned the expression.

"My mother was a cold woman," she said. "I used to wonder how a man like Dad could fall for her. When I was thirteen I found out, though, that their marriage was actually arranged, and I understood everything."

"But what could you have done?" he said. She coughed once, bringing tears to her eyes, which she immediately retracted.

She inhaled deeply and loudly through the nose, making an unladylike sound, but she didn't care. It was early on a Sunday morning. Crying about things in the past that she couldn't change would not make for a good start to her day. Life was brighter, freer now. Reborn allowed her a few moments to collect her wits, in the meantime seating himself back at his usual place at the kitchen table, fiddling with his tie and preening his sideburns.

"I think I'll talk to Hayato sometime soon," she said. "If I don't say anything now, and Tsuna won't stop running around like a chicken with its head cut off long enough to realize what's going on, then the situation could become terrible."

"Good," he said. He tapped his pudgy baby fingers on the edge of the table. They barely made a sound as they hit the wood one by one.

Despite having been awake about half an hour, Bianchi felt exhausted again. Her thoughts filled with memories of her brother. On him, she came to a private conclusion of sorts – a revelation that pained her heart all the more.

_Hayato's weak, always has been, always will be. The odds have been stacked heavily against him since birth. He's set up for failure everywhere. He automatically gets the short end of the stick in every aspect of life, but that's the thing about him: he doesn't just accept it. Even with all this trying, nothing could ever replace the natural luck that he just doesn't have. Yet he ignores this and wrestles with all his might until he gets the whole stick, then uses it to walk on to the next stage of life. So Hayato is weak deep down and he knows it. He just refuses to give up. He's never been the type to sit by quietly and let his bad circumstances consume who he is. That's the most honorable thing about him, I think. If everyone tried as hard as Hayato does at everything, the world would be such a better place. If you get right down to it, this perseverance is all Hayato has. He is nothing and he can do nothing without his determination. He would be nowhere today had he not tried his absolute hardest. That's probably why he _seems_ so angry all the time; he's not angry, just focusing. Some people might call him stubborn, impractical, hardheaded or ruthless, but I say it's his best quality. I also think that the wall he's put up to block out all the bad things and push through to the good – has disintegrated quite a bit. Without that solid will to keep on going, I don't know what will become of him. If his thick, protective outer layer of willfulness really is wearing out, the world will see and – I very much hope not, though it is probable – take advantage of who he is on the inside: fragile, sick, sad. His sweet, earnest soul would be fully blackened. _

_I can only hope that he made the right choice in letting Tsuna travel with him through this cruel reality. _

0o.o0o.o0

**Ugh. **

**So many parentheses. **

**So much italics. **

**Ugh. Ugh. **

**Notice some of the Italian I snuck in there? If you know it's wrong, please tell me the proper way to phrase it. I'll fix it and credit you. I speak English and un poco de Español and that's all. I tried my best with the Italian, but I'm still not sure. Thanks. **


	7. The ripples on the water surface

**Thank you to all readers and reviewers (: **

**Chapter Seven: ****The ripples on the water surface had to be born somewhere. I just wish I hadn't dipped my toe in it in the first place.**

**LXI. Solution, resolution. **

Overhead, the dust streaked in loose groups down the beams of light, disappearing upon contact with the gentle waves. Hayato's entire body lay submerged in this clear, shallow water. All sound was vacant, all vision distorted. There were no definitions here, as far as he could see – this was simply a bright place. Soothingly bright. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, but he didn't notice.

The flat ground beneath him melted into soft sands. He felt the grains displace slightly under his relaxing muscles.

Hayato wasn't sure whether he liked this or not. He couldn't direct his eyes anywhere but upward, or even close them; nonetheless he felt the constant sensation that he was naked. The water brushed so vividly against every inch of his skin. It tantalized him. He unconsciously and fervently longed for it to lift and carry him away. The water's purity imposed tingles onto his skin as it washed away all the pain, all the scars, all the wounds inside and out.

A single word floated across the top of his mind. _Death_. From him it incited no reaction, no feeling at all. No questions arose. Nothing. No other thoughts accompanied the word.

_Birth and Death_. Air he did not know he had leaked out of his nose, coalescing into one bubble that the tiny waves instantly swept out of reach. _Creation and Destruction. Birth and Death_. But neither of those phenomena existed here, birth or death. There was simply "being." Or perhaps Hayato failed to understand. Aside from these words that only traveled along with the flow of the water and sometimes caught in his brain, he was alone and blank.

The water grazed over him continuously, lightly kissing his silken skin. His head –

It was clear, numb, unthreatened, unthreatening.

Something began to dawn on him, however. He did not feel disturbed by it, or excited. It was a flat idea, nothing more.

_I'm drowning. _

His shoulder blades spread; the sands sighed apart and accepted them. Vaguely he became able to wiggle his toes and sense so. Feeling also restored in his chest.

_I'm drowning_. The message grew in size and urgency. _I'm drowning_. Its meaning remained foreign to him for another few seconds until the compulsion to _breathe, don't die, breathe, breathe_ shot blazingly through him. The panic shortly followed. He knew he could not breathe but here he knew nothing save simple feelings and incomplete thoughts. His back arched; his head thrust backward, further into the ground; his jaw almost unhinged; his diaphragm shrank as liquid flooded into his lungs. He tried and tried to tell his muscles, _move, get up, move_, he floundered, _move!_, he tried again. _Move! _

He broke through the water's surface and all at once, the water in his lungs turned to blood, the sand solidified, the water vanished, the light dimmed, and everything real – the headache, the stomach pain, the chest pressure, the scars and the broken hand and the stinging contacts and the old slices along his arm – crashed into him.

Drenched in sweat, Hayato collapsed into the fetal position. Blood spilled out of his mouth in large amounts while coughing between ragged pants and gasps. He felt utterly helpless against the uncontrollable movements, the pain that refused to leave him, his cursed mind that haunted him in every moment of peace.

Gasping, sighing and whimpering, he held his head tight in his hands, the right hand protesting. His eyes watered underneath the clenched lids. The migraine was instantly debilitating.

His eyes opened briefly to catch a glimpse of the dark red puddle between his denim-clad legs before his torso swung over, the gravity inescapable, and he fell weakly flat on his back, the jacket hood bunching up under his neck. The only muscles he could detect were those used for breathing, and even at that they struggled. His lungs occupied the entire inside of his body. When he filled them too sharply, he'd cough wildly more and have to spit the blood out of his mouth. When he took too long to inhale, the dust poured down his throat, giving him an itchy, constrained feeling before plunging him into more bloody hacking.

Only once he finally calmed enough to start breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth did he open his bleary eyes again. This time he saw the cracks in the ceiling first. His location finally registered in his mind: he had wandered into an old music store last night, and supposed that he had fallen asleep there – here.

Slowly he gathered the strength to sit up again. The long sterling silver chain around his neck slid against the creaking wood floor. He cast through looks over his surroundings. Through the covered window and barricaded door, the sunlight still somehow found its way into this room. The dust tangoed endlessly in the light rays.

His contacts hurt his eyes so greatly that, after officially establishing where he was and what was around him, he removed the things one at a time and flicked them halfway across the room. They landed invisible on the floor. Nearsighted and farsighted, Hayato was now virtually blind. At best he could make out vague, amorphous spots of sunlight-soaked color. He couldn't have cared less at this moment, however. The contacts had stung excruciatingly, he had more pair at home, and besides, he was fairly proficient at finding his way to safety while sightless. He had sure done it before – such thoughts called to mind a time about four years ago when wore glasses every day instead of contacts, and he had been in the middle of a busy shootout between two rival gangs when his glasses broke and he had to make his way out of the battlefield, unable to see anything. He honestly had no explanation as to how he survived that.

He felt a large weight bearing down, all over, that hadn't been there before. Accompanying the pressure, the need to escape it. The interior of this store, though, was so comfortable to him. He felt an indescribable ease here unlike anything he had experienced in a very long time. He did not want to leave this place right now. Nor, he felt, was the compulsion exactly to leave it. He pondered, then his bony arm grazed the inside of his jacket sleeve.

With barely any thought, Hayato lifted the necklaces over his head, shrugged off his jacket, and swiftly removed his T-shirt. The air exhilarated his skin. He shuddered, and the trembling would not stop; the temperature was mild, but more sweat erupted from his goosebumped skin.

He felt much better. His hand slipped behind his back. He traced his fingers along the drastic bumps of his spine, moving up as far as he could at this angle. His stomach compressed in the reaction. His headache surged.

Yet somehow, sitting blind, half-naked, and alone in a dusty, run-down building in a suspicious neighborhood, Hayato felt…

He could feel the faint vibrations of music, hear its whispers in his ears, sense the tingles of it between the ridges of his fingerprints, taste the notes on his tongue, inundate his lungs with its air, and wondered if it was in his head.

**LXII. My fire breathes while I cannot. **

Tsuna scampered into the kitchen with determined, eager eyes and white tennis shoes. He grabbed an apple, slid into his place at the table and commenced eating all in one fluid motion.

Nana blinked at him, watched him take a few bites of breakfast, then said, "You know it's Sunday, right?"

Cheeks full of food, he nodded in his mother's direction. Bianchi dipped the end of a pastry into her coffee cup and stirred it around lazily. Fuuta yawned; afterward continued to stare blankly at the empty placemat in front of him.

"Then is there any particular reason why you're awake and dressed and alert _before _noon?" Nana asked.

Tsuna swallowed. "I've got stuff to do this morning," he said.

"What kind of stuff?" Nana said. She sat at the table with some grape jelly-covered toast.

"Stuff," he replied, and crunched into the apple again.

"School stuff? Friend stuff? Boyfriend stuff? You're not being very specific." She bit into the toast and the jelly began its slow descent down the side of the bread.

Tsuna shook his head. "Just stuff," he said simply.

"You seem pretty excited about this 'stuff,'" Bianchi chimed in.

Nana nodded and her gaze sharpened slightly. "Yes, you do. Suspiciously so."

"Mom," Tsuna chuckled, but he couldn't think of any real rebuttal. Before he knew it, he had reduced the apple to just a core. He got up, tossed it in the stainless steel trashcan and started out of the kitchen. "Reborn's coming, too. See you guys later," he said.

"Wait, Tsu-kun," Nana said, leaning out of her chair in Tsuna's direction.

Tsuna poked his head out from behind the wall. "Yeah, Mom?"

"Are you sure you got enough to eat?" she asked.

He nodded. "Spartan breakfast." He began to walk away again, but she called him back. "Tsu-kun."

"Yes?" he said, a little less patiently.

"Promise me you're not going to do anything dangerous," she said with a scolding tone.

"Yes, Mom, I promise," he said, though he wasn't sure he would be able to keep that promise. This outing with Reborn had been planned. They knew what they were going to do. But then again, it was _Reborn_. He rolled his eyes as soon as he had stepped out of view of his mother again.

He heard her call to him a third time. "Tsu-kun!" He stomped over to the doorway. "What?"

She smiled sweetly at him. "I love you," she said.

He chuckled. "Love you too."

**LXIII. Dancing on a breaking island in a sea of lava. **

Tips of long grass reached for his ankles. The sun had risen only a couple of hours ago yet had already grown up to its full power. Tsuna held his hand stiff over his brow. The little guy beside him veered slightly to the side. Tsuna looked in Reborn's direction and, realizing that he was headed for _the_ spot, followed him.

Reborn pulled a candle out of his pocket and set it on a tree stump. Then he sat on the largest root. The sunlight brought a tiny hint of color to his black eyes as they gazed up at his student. Tsuna, meanwhile, stared at the candle. He paled, stiffened. He began to think that this wasn't too good an idea after all.

"I'm waiting," Reborn said. He propped up one knee and set his elbow on it, then laid his chin in his open palm.

The teenager inhaled deeply, held the breath, and released it with a defeated sound. His eyes closed and his lips slowly turned up into a smile. He opened his eyes and flitted them in Reborn's direction, his head and then whole body following. He still smiled.

Reborn had an indefinable expression. "What?"

"Just…" Tsuna began, but stopped there for a moment. His neck went a little limp as he looked to the sky to find the right words to say. "I don't think I ever told you this out loud, to your face."

"Told me what?" Reborn said.

"Thank you," Tsuna replied.

Reborn squinted at his student, scowling in confusion, as a small, holey cloud passed the sun.

"I don't know why it took me so long to realize this, or why it came to me just now, but." Tsuna paused briefly. "I could never thank you enough for everything you've done for me, Reborn."

At this point, Reborn averted his eyes bashfully, but he kept listening. A timid breeze grazed his sideburns. It hit Tsuna's hair, too, though didn't move it much.

"I know I've been whiny and weird and probably the most difficult student you've ever had, but you've put up with me for years and done everything you could to make me into a better person. I just hope you know you succeeded. I'm proud to have a tutor like you. I appreciate you so much, you know? Because of you, I went from having no self-esteem and no future to being me, the real me. The one you uncovered. I have friends and strength and intelligence and confidence and love. I never would have had any of that without you."

After Tsuna had stopped talking for a few seconds, Reborn looked back over at him. He scanned Tsuna's sincere face. "You're wrong, Tsuna. You did all of that by yourself," he said. "I didn't make anything happen – I am just your connection, who came in at the right place and the right time. You're giving me too much credit – you were the one with the natural talent to take everything I gave you and use it to help yourself grow."

Tsuna's mouth curved into a sideways smile.

"Even so, you could stand to thank me more," Reborn said. Tsuna chuckled. "Now," Reborn instructed, "I believe you know what to do."

Tsuna nodded. He pulled the mittens out of his back pockets and slid them onto his hands. Then he inhaled through the nose and sighed calmly, spreading his legs shoulder-width apart. He shook his hands; his arms went limp, his forehead and palms ignited. He stared hard at the candle for one minute, two minutes, and Reborn watched his student silently as Tsuna gradually brought his eyes to a close. Tsuna inhaled deeply, hollowing his entire body, allowing the skin left over to become one with the wind. He descended into a pitch-dark nothingness. The image of his beloved boyfriend materialized out of the blackness in his mind. He knew each and every little detail about Hayato's appearance – right down to the approximate number of his long eyelashes, like flittering white lace framing his eyes – and embraced the overwhelming beauty of it. The flames' strength grew.

**LXIV. El Tatio. **

Reborn couldn't quite name the feeling he got when he saw the candle burst into flames, a wide column of fire completely swallowing it. The heat felt more intense than he remembered for the X-Burner or any other technique – it pricked at his skin, washed over him like a tidal wave. He stood on impulse on his short little legs. Almost as quickly as the geyser of flames had erupted from nowhere, it evaporated. Tiny embers drifted downward and disappeared when they hit the ground. The candle had melted to an undistinguishable black mass on the tree stump. Reborn hopped up onto the largest of the roots, observed the wax, and smiled.

**LXV. Hammers and nails. **

Upon returning to his apartment, Gokudera began stripping in preparation for a much-needed shower. He swore someone had called him on a cue. During the first few rings, he just stared at his cell phone pointedly, realizing right off that he really wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone. But, with a lengthy sigh, he stomped out of the bathroom and into the main room and reached a bare arm out to grab it.

"Yeah?" he groaned.

It was Yamamoto on the other end of the line. "Hey, Dera," he said. Gokudera could hear the hopeful smile in his voice. "How are you doing today?"

Gokudera scowled. "Cut the small talk, Moto. If you have no real reason to call me, then you should just hang up right now."

"I just want to know how you are," Yamamoto said defensively. "Why are you so peeved? Did I call you at a bad time?"

"That's the thing about phone conversations. All you can detect is my voice. You couldn't tell when you decided to call me that I was about to shower." He hooked a thumb around one of the belt loops on his jeans, hiking them up.

"Ah, sorry," Yamamoto said.

"It's no big deal. I can wait a minute, I suppose."

"Then can't one _friend_ call another _friend_ to chat? I mean, we are _friends_, aren't we?" Yamamoto said. He heard Gokudera grumble in lieu of an intelligent argument and couldn't help but smile again. "So. How are you?"

"I feel…" Gokudera drew a thoughtful sigh. "I feel like I've grown a pair of wings on my back. And they're liberating. But they're heavy."

Yamamoto nodded inaudibly. "Nice analogy," he said.

"I couldn't think of any other way to describe it," Gokudera replied.

"Though I can't tell whether that's a good thing or not…" Yamamoto half-asked.

Gokudera sighed again. "Neither can I."

Some static came over the line then, as though one of the boys was messing with the phone position. Neither realized that the other hadn't moved his phone at all. After a moment of awkward silence, Yamamoto could make out the faintest breathing sounds on the other end of the line. Gokudera sensed it too, _another presence_.

Yamamoto frowned in a playful manner. "Kenta, is that you?"

The teens heard little Kenta Yamamoto yelp and quickly disconnect. Yamamoto laughed. Gokudera rolled his eyes. "Was that your brother just now?" the latter asked.

"Yeah," Yamamoto said. "I'm on the landline, the home phone, so, I guess he just picked up another receiver." He failed to stifle a few more chuckles.

"Damned annoying Baseball Runt," Gokudera cursed under his breath.

Yamamoto sighed out of the laugh. "Well, guess I'll let you get off the phone and shower now."

"Thanks," Gokudera said sarcastically, and he hung up. He plugged his BlackBerry back into its charger at the kitchen counter – furrowing his brows, decided to switch it to vibrate at the last second – and made his way into the bathroom for a shower he felt he desperately needed.

Hayato turned the water on to piping hot, though it would take a minute or two for it to heat up to optimal temperature. He dropped his arms to the side and spun around to look at the medicine cabinet. One of his best repair jobs yet, if he did say so himself. Tentatively he touched his fingertips to the corner of the small wooden door and ran them along the grain, which he could see but not distinguish through texture. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, a mere flash of his silver hair and pale skin. Somehow the split-second glance had drawn him in. He stared unblinkingly at his reflection. This had to be the first time he had seen himself today. Hayato had known for years that he was well above average-looking – family and friends and even random strangers had told him so too many times for him to ignore it. Yet whenever he saw himself, he felt _ugly_. To him, on the outside, he looked as conflicted and miserable and dark as he was on the inside. It was a matter of perspective, he supposed: where others saw in his eyes a sensual shade of green, he saw the deep, bruised bags underneath; where others saw a perfectly sculpted nose, he saw the wicked trophy of a thousand fights; where others saw soft hair of an unconventional natural color, he saw the near-invisible strands that slipped out and brought him one step closer to a striking baldness.

His arms rose as gradually as he pulled his eyes away from his face in the mirror. He held the undersides of his forearms upward and gazed at the ashen skin there. One hand balled into a fist, the other struggled against the bandages to do the same. He counted all the scars. He tried to trace them from the origin on, pretending his piercing gaze was the razorblade that had borne them.

Until he realized it was not the blade that had formed them. It was he holding the blade. Night after night, nightmare after nightmare, he had brought all these burdens upon himself. There was nobody else to blame.

He thought back to his special conversation with Yamamoto. The talk had happened, the promises made, only two days ago, but it already felt like forever. Yamamoto's heartbroken face and voice came to his mind in muted watercolors. _"You… cut yourself." _Or maybe it had gone differently. Quite honestly, he couldn't remember whether it had actually taken place or if it was just another trick his cruel mind loved to play. He wasn't sure of anything anymore. Every moment he lived with the fear that none of this was real.

He crossed his arms over his bare chest, in the shape of an X, just like the X-shaped scar over his heart. It struck him now just how _weak_ he was, in every sense of the word. His arms dropped to his sides.

At birth he had been cursed with a weak body. He was delivered two and a half months prematurely, to an unmarried 18-year-old mother, and he had asthma, epilepsy and a hole in his heart. And it all went downhill from there. Hayato had never known a moment when he didn't have to struggle. Everything stacked against him. He just never took into account how vulnerable he was.

Except now this was different. His weakness was his own fault. He gave in. He let himself give in.

He looked back up at the fogging mirror, then looked to the end table by the couch and wondered if the razorblade was still there. His body drifted into the main room, feet shuffling and stumbling, eyes dazed. The echo of water hitting shower tiles resonated throughout the whole apartment. The flip of a trashcan lid had never sounded so good.

**LXVI. Call EnmaChat and you'll be connected to the hottest singles in your neighborhood. **

Vacant red eyes emerged from behind the tree, watching from afar the movements of the other boy. Every muscle in Enma's body felt stiff and sore. His hand slid down the tree a few inches, stopping to finger a small knot in the bark.

_God, just look at him_, Enma thought, and he could physically sense the guilt in thinking such a thing. He clenched a loose fist over his own chest.

From the beginning Enma hadn't the vaguest idea how Tsuna's mind worked. The boys had their share of similarities. They had the same taste in food and clothes, almost the same personalities, and practically the same loving family of friends. _So why can't we be together? _It didn't make sense.Enma had to admit, Gokudera was not a bad-looking guy at all – brooding mossy eyes, hair like polished silver, porcelain skin, an expressive face, he was a thing of beauty. Plus, Gokudera had been in Tsuna's life well over a year before Enma came along, so of course they were closer. _But what's wrong with me? Why can't I be the one who holds your attention the way Gokudera does? _

There had to be something different about their relationship, something that Enma had not been able to identify, that made it so special, that made Gokudera and Tsuna eat out of the palms of each other's hands. At the very least, Enma had to find out what that something was. That way, even if Tsuna would never reciprocate his feelings, he could receive some kind of closure.

Timidly, he stepped out of the shadow of the tree and approached the Tenth Vongola.

"H-hi, Tsuna." His voice was barely audible, but Tsuna noticed it anyway and immediately turned to face his red-haired friend.

"Oh, Enma," he said enthusiastically, "I didn't know you were around." He flashed a smile – his pure, enchanting, lovely smile, contagious in a painless way.

"I just wanted to…" he stumbled over the words, "…to say thank you and I'm sorry. You know, for what you said yesterday." Reborn, whose conversation with his student had gone interrupted by Enma's appearance, sat watching the boys from his spot on the ground, a patch of dirt that the grass avoided.

Tsuna's eyes opened a little wider – Enma could see more of the brilliant brown color in them –, his smile more serious. "Ah, it's no big deal," he replied with a bashful pivot.

"I do kind of have a question, though," Enma said. "If you're not too busy…"

"No, I don't think I am," Tsuna said. He glanced at Reborn. "Yeah. We can talk."

Enma shuffled forward slightly, his usually blank eyes flooded with heat. "I wanted to ask. When did you know that you were in love with Kyoko Sasagawa?"

"What do you mean?" Tsuna asked. He ducked down, and Enma took the hint to sit in the vibrant grass, and he swore he could feel the movement of a million living things underneath him. Tsuna sat too, with his knees out to the sides, grabbing his feet that he had centered in front of him. His face looked so patient and welcoming and curious. _He was so cute_.

"Like, what happened to make you realize you were in love with her?" he said.

Tsuna didn't have to think long, though a dreamy, mawkish spark dawned in his eyes. "I pretty much fell in love with her at first sight," he said. He rocked forward a little. "I didn't know who she was, and she didn't know who I was. I just thought she had a nice smile. The fact that she had shown that nice smile to me without even knowing who I was, was, well, kind of a foreign concept to me then. It only took a split-second before I became obsessed with her." He chuckled nervously.

Enma gestured his acceptance of the answer with a very small nod and a very slow blink. "So, it just _happened_?"

"Yup."

Casting his eyes on a hill at the edge of the field, Enma pieced together the words he would speak next, carefully choosing and carving them in his own mind. All at once he trained his focus back on Tsuna and said, "What about Gokudera? When did you fall in love with him?"

This made Tsuna roll his eyes to the sky, click his tongue, and exhale. Hayato's image appeared inside his head and he rewound it until he found a familiar time.

"Well, it was the break between school years, you know," Tsuna began, "And – you remember. You and your family went to Italy. Yamamoto was traveling around for the Spring Tournament with the rest of the baseball team. Kyoko-chan toured with her dance company, too. Ryohei had to work. Haru visited her mother in Tokyo. Chrome spent the whole break in Kokuyo. Hayato was the only friend I had left for the whole break. So we hung out every day. I don't think we had ever done that before, at least not as much as we did during break."

"Done what, hung out just the two of you?" Enma asked, and Tsuna nodded. Enma could see the loving look that Tsuna's expression took on at the mention of his boyfriend's name, and it caused an aggressive heat to form inside Enma's throat.

"Just the two of us, Hayato and me, no other friends, no fights, nothing to do. It was a little strange, but… I found that I truly enjoyed myself with him." He leaned back. "I guess it also made me realize how much he had changed since we had met – I mean, he was still basically the same, but more mature, more composed, since he had gotten all the experience and settled down with Vongola work. Because, before, he was just a complete mess." He laughed once at that while Enma stayed diligently silent. "And I thought, 'I'm so lucky to have a friend like him. He's really amazing.'"

"During break was when you realized it, then?" Enma asked.

Tsuna pondered for a second, then shook his head. "Well, no. I do know that it was during break when I started to feel weird around him, though."

"When did the exact feeling come to mind?" Enma said. He found that he was starting to sound a little impatient, and, relieved that his tone didn't seem to faze Tsuna, calmed himself down. Reborn shot Enma an invisible scowl.

Tsuna's head went backward as he gazed at the sky through the thin canopy above him. A romantic smile curled his sweet lips, bringing a pinkish color to his skin. Enma forced down a shudder. "April first this year. The first day of ninth grade." Tsuna's head lowered slowly until his eyes met Enma's and stopped. His brown eyes swam with a wistful glow. Enma stifled a desperate noise.

"We were standing around in a big mob in the courtyard. Nobody was in uniform, since it was the first day and you know, we never do anything on first days. I was really excited because I had you and P. and Yamamoto and Kyoko-chan and Chrome and Hayato in my homeroom again this year – I couldn't believe how lucky I was. I mean, third year in a row I had all my friends in the same class as me. It had to be some universal fluke or gift or something, but I didn't care, I was happy."

"I was happy, too, I remember," Enma mumbled.

"I know _exactly_ when I realized I loved Hayato, as more than just a friend," he said, and he made a gesture with his childish hands and then returned them to their spot holding his feet. "He was walking alone down that path to the courtyard, with all the sakura falling and dancing around him. When I saw him step out of the shadows of the trees and into the sunlight, he looked like an angel, and I swear I forgot how to breathe for a minute." He sighed quietly. "I sound like a poet, don't I? I suppose that's what people sound like when they talk about the person they love."

"And that was when you knew," Enma breathed. His eyes seemed glazed.

"That was when I knew," Tsuna repeated. "And between coming to terms with the way I felt and gathering up the courage to confess to Hayato, it took me two weeks. Man, those were an _extremely_ awkward two weeks. I barely spoke to him. I never agreed to hang out with him after school, even though some other friends would join us every time. I just could _not_ make eye contact with him, or be in the same room with him for too long. I was probably pretty rude to him. But I think he understands why." He practically melted forward, a beautifully content smile on his face. The warmth in his heart had been projected for practically all the world to see.

Enma called to mind the moment he realized his love for Tsuna. Hibari had gone to Kokuyo to seek out a rematch with the elusive Mukuro Rokudo, so Adelheid, high on her power as the other co-chairperson of the Namimori Middle School Disciplinary Committee was missing, went on a rampage. She punished any student whose uniform was in any way incomplete, whose behavior was even slightly out of line, who was tardy by even one second. She had trapped Ryohei, Koyo and Julie in nets and hung them from a tree as punishment for fighting and philandering. But she wouldn't let Enma or Tsuna slip by a few seconds after the bell – she tied them by the ankles to the outside wall of the school building, leaving them upside-down for an hour. The experience was painful and humiliating – he really couldn't have "picked" a more embarrassing time to fall in love with someone, while the blood was rushing to both of their heads.

His expression melted into a smile without his control, but he didn't mind it in the slightest. "I hope Gokudera knows how lucky he is," he said.

"Oh, no, he thinks he's a lot luckier to have me than he actually is," Tsuna said with a bewildered chuckle. "I have no idea what he sees in me. He's smarter, stronger, more experienced, better-looking than I am or probably ever will be." His face grew despondent, but only for a short moment. "Yet he still loves me. I don't get it. I'm nothing special."

"You're special to _him_, apparently." Enma shrugged. "You… You have this _effect_ on people, Tsuna." Their eyes met. "I can't quite explain it, but something about you just makes everyone you meet better. I don't think I could find a single person who has met you and can say they haven't changed because of it." Enma averted the gaze, blushing. "I guess that's what Gokudera likes best about you. You changed him for the better. That's what you do to everyone without even realizing it, without even trying. Including me – before I met you, I was an angry and sad little wallflower, but you set me on the path to become happier and more assertive and self-aware. And I didn't know Gokudera before you came into his life, but I'm sure you did something similar for him."

Tsuna didn't quite know what to say to that. He glanced back at his tutor and the two of them exchanged little smiles. Sometime over two years ago, Tsuna was stuck in his inescapable No-Good rut. He lived miserably, thinking that everybody either secretly or overtly hated him. He had lay awake many a night, staring at his unmoving bedroom door or the blank television screen, contemplating suicide. _No one would miss me, no one would care, if I died, surely – _he had convinced himself of that. Now, if he died, a world of people would be lost without him. He had found a calling, a family. Enma said that he changed people's lives for the better. But Reborn had been the one who changed Tsuna in the first place, starting a chain reaction of redeemed souls.

"That might be it," Tsuna thought aloud. Then he returned to facing his redheaded friend.

Enma's shoulders sank noticeably. He peered down at the grass just in front of his knees. At length he stood, blinking in the mid-morning sun, and his hands began to fidget. "Well, ah. Th-thank you very much, again, Tsuna. I'm glad I got to talk to you." He stepped toward him a few inches, then paused. "You're really the best friend I could have asked for," he said.

In the end, Enma supposed he had not found the answer to his questions. Tsuna's reasons for whom he fell in love with had to be unexplainable with words, or go over his head in some other way.

"I think so too," Tsuna replied, "About you," and he stood as well. "It's always nice to talk to you." Reborn got on his feet.

Enma grinned – a large, smitten, exasperated grin that made his eyes glitter. The expression quickly hardened with determination. "I have a small favor – and I will officially leave you alone after that." He ground his toe into the dirt, alarming a passing grasshopper. He started walking toward the Vongola boss again.

"Well, you don't have to leave me alone," Tsuna said. "What is it?"

"Just hold still and close your eyes," Enma said. He couldn't help how quietly the words came out. He hated the fact that he mumbled. When he caught the confused look in Tsuna's open eyes, he instantly felt ashamed. "Hm?" Tsuna blinked innocently –

Enma's lips trembled as they brushed shyly against Tsuna's. The kiss was light and untried and more afraid than anything, and Enma's hands flew behind his own back. Tsuna took a large step backwards, bringing his hand up to half-push himself away from the other boy. His brown eyes went wide. He felt the sweat begin to seep out of his pores.

"I-I'm so sorry!" Enma said. "I just – I needed this! I can't help myself!"

"Enma…" Tsuna breathed. Reborn tipped the brim of his hat over his eyes and looked away.

Hanging his head in a shameful bow, Enma clasped his hands in front of him. "Please forgive me, Tsuna. Please. I beg you. I won't do anything like that to you ever again."

"Enma," Tsuna said, a little louder, making the Shimon boss bow lower.

Another boy had just taken his lips. His mind rushed to his right-hand man, and the nightmare of losing him over this. A desperate noise escaped from him as if Hayato had been standing right there and Tsuna had tried to reach out and grab him before he would turn away forever.

Tsuna clutched his hands to his chest. "I have to go," he said. "I'm sorry."

He turned and walked hurriedly out of the field as Enma stood straight. Reborn shook his head and followed closely behind.

**LXVII. Anymore of this. **

Back and forth, back and forth.

Tsuna clutched the sides of his head, scratching his scalp, and groaned loudly, which turned into a whining moan, which turned into an exasperated sigh. He turned on his heels to stomp to the other end of the room.

The corner of Reborn's lip curved downward as the sitting baby watched his student pace around the room in frustration. Reborn brought legs up from the edge of the bed and bent them Indian-style. He grabbed onto the toes of his feet with both hands. Tsuna made another turn and quickened his pace for about half a lap.

Then Tsuna gasped in revelation, but not without a swift recovery to furrowed eyebrows and heavy feet. He grabbed his iPhone, almost angrily, and dialed one of the numbers in his favorites. This still did not stop him from pacing, until he heard the other boy's voice after just the first ring and immediately stood still.

"Hey, Tenth," Hayato had said, eagerly and lovingly, as he always did.

"Hayato," Tsuna replied bluntly. He suddenly found that he couldn't keep his voice steady.

Hayato's tone changed immediately to one of deep concern. "Is everything all right?"

"No," came Tsuna's quiet voice.

"Tenth, what's wrong? Tell me."

Tsuna felt vastly awful right now – even the sound of his boyfriend's sympathy in that sweet, smoky, Italian-accented voice did very little to quell the feeling. Instead, it brought the distraught Tsuna dangerously closer to tears.

"I… I just really want to see you right now. In person. That would make everything better," Tsuna explained. "C-could we meet somewhere?"

"Okay," Hayato said. "We can meet halfway. How about outside the main entrance to the mall? Is that good with you?"

Tsuna nodded, many times. It took him a few seconds to remember that Hayato couldn't see what he was doing over a phone. "Mm-hm," he could barely sound out.

"I'll be there in about fifteen or twenty minutes, then," Hayato said.

"…K-…'kay." When Tsuna looked at Reborn, his will strengthened a little. He forced his near-sobs back down deep inside him, deep enough to last him until he was somewhere better: in the arms of his beloved.

"Tenth?"

Tsuna gasped silently at the call of his name.

"I love you," Hayato said. The words dripped with sincerity, reassurance. Their meaning rocked Tsuna's very core, dislodging the potential tears back to their previous places. "I love you," he repeated when he heard Tsuna's badly hidden sniffle.

"I love you," Tsuna replied. He hung up hesitantly, shut his eyes tight, holding the phone to his heart and taking in an exaggerated sniffle, and started out his bedroom door. Not without a last glance at the baby on his bed, who acknowledged the look with an understanding nod.

**LXVIII. Eternal eyes, eternal hearts. **

Pocketing his BlackBerry upon ending the call, Gokudera minimized the Firefox window active on the laptop– Tumblr and three different Google search results pages on the tabs – and closed the laptop. He stood robotically from the couch. The television on the wall, showing a game show to which he hadn't really been paying that much attention, promptly shut off at the press of a button on the remote. Gokudera made a quick bathroom stop, checking himself in the mirror at the last minute to make sure he looked normal. Then he grabbed his wallet and keys, slipped on a beat-up pair of tennis shoes, and walked out the door.

0o.o0o.o0

He found his boyfriend waiting casually beside a pillar. As soon as he had spotted him, Tsuna graduated from a hurried walk to a canter. He lifted his arms at a few feet away, and Hayato stood straighter. A mother sauntered past them, throwing a quick glance at the two boys before looking back down at the stroller she pushed. Once he had gotten in Hayato's arms, all Tsuna's floodgates opened, and he pressed his blushing face into Hayato's welcoming chest.

Frowning sympathetically, Hayato stroked the Tenth's back, patted him a few times. He settled on just holding him tighter after that.

"Why is everything so hard?" Tsuna blubbered out. _I wish I knew_, Hayato thought in unspoken response.

Tsuna craned his neck upward to meet Hayato's eyes. Hayato looked down at his teary face. "Th-the-the new technique and the base and all the papers and meetings and everyone wants to talk to me but I don't want them! I just want these people to leave me alone. I just want to spend all day with you and not have to worry about all this other crap," Tsuna blubbered. He sniffled.

Hayato nodded, petting his boss' chestnut hair.

"Just being around you makes everything better, Hayato," Tsuna said. "I'm sorry I'm such a mess right now. I really needed to see you, in person, and now that I'm here with you all those things don't seem so big. You're my only relief, you know?"

The notion of smiling came to Hayato's lips. He leaned his head down and, brushing aside the tousled brown bangs, affectionately kissed the Tenth's forehead. Tsuna closed his eyes. He hugged Hayato more tautly now, the side of his head against the warm hollow of Hayato's chest. He could hear the sweet, subtle sounds of Hayato's heartbeat and breathing, and within a few short moments, he had stilled, cutting off the tear flow.

"I will always stick by you, Tenth," Hayato said, stroking the brown hair sweetly. "Unshakably, unyieldingly, through anything. Always. I will." Tsuna could feel the subtle vibrations coming from Hayato's chest accompanying the soothing voice. Hayato always knew just what to say. Tsuna wished he could be as eloquent.

Tsuna's lips tugged into a piteous frown. He held in a moan, letting it out silently after a few seconds. Slowly his grip on Hayato slackened until eventually the two of them separated, leaving Tsuna self-depreciatively lonely and Hayato a little confused.

"Hayato…" Tsuna murmured. His voice started sounding weepy again. He fisted one hand, then the other. Tsuna's eyes met his boyfriend's, and the brown pair looked so wet and fragile.

"…I really, really love you, you know," Tsuna finished. He firmed his voice to the best of his ability.

"I love you too, Tenth," Hayato said. "You're my world, my life, my everything."

Tsuna could tangibly feel the sincerity of Hayato's words smack him in the face. His eyes narrowed and his vision blurred completely with tears.

"_Only_ you," Tsuna said under his breath. Even though Hayato heard, he didn't reply to it, since he could tell Tsuna was trying to tell it to himself more than to him.

Tsuna couldn't take Hayato's gaze anymore, so he averted his eyes to the ground. "Enma… he… he's in love with me too." His shoulders sank. "And I don't feel the same about him, and he came on to me – he kissed me today, and I just should have told you in the first place, right when I found out." His voice grew quieter with every word that came out. "I made a mistake in not letting you know and… I'm sorry, please don't be mad at me, or at him—"

He stopped when he felt Hayato's hands take his own and hold them gently. They were warm, smooth, embracive hands that gave him a peace of mind and evoke a feeling in him that nothing else could. Large, deft, with long, slender, graceful fingers, and soft skin: if any pair of hands was more perfect than Hayato's, it probably didn't belong to a human. Tsuna couldn't get enough of them. Holding hands with Hayato had become Tsuna's favorite thing in the whole world.

Perhaps that was something about falling in love with someone. Everything about the person seemed perfect, the hands, the hair, the face, the eyes, the lips, the skin, the voice, _right down to the very heartbeat._ Whether flawed or well endowed, all the smallest details were beautiful, and even the big picture more than the great sum of its parts. A purpose, a previously unattainable rightness, a sense of self-worth, an elimination of loneliness – the boys were all these things and more for one another.

Tsuna wrapped his fingers around Hayato's. He dared to peer back up into those mossy eyes again.

"Tenth," Hayato whispered, "Don't be upset."

"But I feel like I've… betrayed you."

Hayato shook his head. His snowy lashes followed his eyelids as they quickly dropped and lifted. His hair swayed slightly with the movement. "You did nothing wrong," he said. "_He_ kissed _you_, didn't he? It wasn't the other way around, and even if it was, I'd forgive you."

Tsuna's eyes widened as he brought his and Hayato's hands closer together, toward the middle. "But… you're not mad at him?"

"Tenth, I know first-hand how hard it is to control yourself around someone you love," Hayato said. "I've loved you for so long… I knew it before you could have even grasped a hint of it. I can't tell you how many times, while we were just friends, that I had wanted to just grab you and kiss you all over and not let you go. It took every ounce of my self-control to keep from making a fool of myself like that whenever I was around you." Tsuna smiled timidly at this, as if a full smile wouldn't punish him enough for putting Hayato through such a thing. But Hayato smiled back to show, in some sort of way, _It's not your fault, Tenth_. "I actually admire Kozato for keeping it up this long. I can't be mad at him. Not unless you gave me reason to."

Hayato's head cocked very slightly. "You forgive him, don't you?"

Tsuna nodded.

"Then, if it's not a problem to you, it's not a problem to me." Hayato smiled wider.

Getting on his tiptoes, Tsuna leaned forward over the small gap between the two of them, and kissed Hayato softly on the lips. "I'm so glad," Tsuna whispered, his lips a hair's breadth away from Hayato's, before flattening his feet again. A middle-aged man approaching the mall entrance from the sidewalk averted his eyes from the boys' direction in disgust, but three tween girls standing by the door giggled to each other over the spectacle, stealing playful glances at the "cute gay couple" by the pillar.

"But, still," Hayato said, hunching down a little, "You seem… kind of tense. You're pretty stressed."

Tsuna nodded again, fervently. Hayato's sweet smile turned into a mischievous one. He released the Tenth's left hand, holding his right tighter, and started a few steps to the side when he said, "Come with me."

0o.o0o.o0

Holding hands not too many blocks away from the mall, Hayato had still not given the Tenth any hints about where he was taking him, when they passed a college-age lesbian couple walking down the sidewalk, also holding hands. The woman with the butch haircut grinned and held her open hand up at her side. "Homo pride," she said. Gokudera slapped his bandaged palm against hers as they crossed, replying, "Hell yeah," with a matching smile. Tsuna and the other girl glanced back at each other and chuckled.

**LXIX. "I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world." – Walt Whitman. **

The wind pushed past them, rude and barely fazed by their presence. Hayato's baggy clothes ruffled wildly. Tsuna's hair tried to fly. The latter timidly shuffled closer to the edge of the cliff, but upon seeing the crumbling rocks there and the smallness of the objects in the distance, he shrank back.

"Why did we come here?" Tsuna asked into the headwind. His meek voice echoed off the rock walls.

Hayato smiled at him, taking his hand. "Sometimes, Tenth," he said, "You're not scared or trying to get someone's attention. You just need to scream."

Tsuna's eyebrows furrowed. "Scream?"

"You know, Scream. Yell. Shriek. Shout. 'Sound your barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.'"

The smaller boy scowled. "We didn't have to come all the way out _here_ to do that," he said.

"But here it's much more satisfying. The view is splendid, we're isolated, there's an echo, and it sure beats opening up your bedroom window and scaring the shit out of your neighbors," Hayato said, chuckling, and the two of them turned to face the horizon simultaneously. He released the Tenth's hand and sauntered toward the edge. "Here, let me show you."

He stopped when the toes of his shoes were just inches from the edge, his hair whipping about behind his head like a raging silver fire, Tsuna gazing at his azure silhouette with a mix of concern, awe and curiosity. Hayato brought his arms out perpendicular to the rest of his frame. The sides of his jacket flew unrestrainedly backward, riding every subtlety of the wind. He threw his head back and opened his mouth to the vast heavens. A hoarse scream thundered forth from him. The sun itself blinked at him in response.

The smile that appeared then on Tsuna's face grew exponentially by the second. What struck him was the inspiration, the passion, the pure energy of the act, and of the infinitely beautiful Hayato Gokudera in front of him, raw, performing it.

Hayato's scream ended in a glorious gasp, and in an instant the wind erased all traces of it. He turned around, arms bent slightly but still out to his sides. From beneath the sheet of silver hair billowing around his face, a refreshed smirk pinkened his lips. "See?" he said breathlessly.

At that, Tsuna rushed forward to his boyfriend's side, stopping a little shorter of the cliff's edge. He released a powerful beast of a scream that he, until this moment, had no idea had been boiling and aching deep inside him for years. It pierced the sky, shook the earth, and for a minute, stilled the wind. With each second that passed Tsuna felt as though all his troubles and sins and everything bad inside of him flew out with the air. He finished, and he felt so clean and free and light that he grabbed onto Hayato in the unconscious fear that he might just be blown away.

Hayato put his hand on the small of Tsuna's back. In a split-second decision, he pulled the Tenth closer. "Didn't that feel good?" he said. Tsuna clutched him closer, burying the side of his face in Hayato's plaid shirt while staring out at the peak of the mountain on the other side of the canyon. "Yes," Tsuna said. "Yes. Yes." Tsuna's fists squeezed the material of his boyfriend's shirt tighter.

However, after a minute or two, Tsuna began to release him. "It – _agh_." Tsuna lost the words, and he let go fully, and he took a large step forward, toes hanging just over the edge. He threw his arms in the air. The hem of his T-shirt flew up. "It just feels so… And it's so… I'm so… I just wish I could…" Each time he started, he could not finish. No words could describe how he felt right now. So in the end he settled for raw, childlike laughter, swaying his torso back and forth so the wind could hit him at different angles. Hayato stood and stared at him all the while with a small smile and his hands relaxed in his pants pockets. Out of nowhere he became reminded of his boss' clumsiness and current carefree attitude, and at the edge of a cliff those may not have made a good combination, but he was close enough to the Tenth right now that, if he did slip and start tumbling, he would be able to reach forward and grab him quickly. He wasn't too worried. He was mostly enraptured by his feelings, let alone the Tenth's overwhelming lifted spirit. Seeing the Tenth so happy made him feel good, too.

Tsuna turned around and faced Hayato with the most epiphanic expression Hayato had ever seen on him.

"It's like the end of the world here," Tsuna said. "The wind is really strong."

Hayato's worries grew a little at that so he shuffled over to him and grabbed his arm protectively. "Do you want to sit down?" he asked.

Tsuna thought on it for a moment, his bright brown eyes lost somewhere between Hayato's face and the mysteries in the distance. At length he nodded and the boys carefully lowered themselves to the ground, hands joined. Their legs dangled over the cliff. Some nervousness started to well up inside Tsuna so he lied down, Hayato doing the same. The wind hardly bothered them now, simply passed right overhead without a fight. Strands of their hair tangled in the cracks between the rocks under their heads. The negative thoughts began to slowly pipe back into Tsuna's mind as he studied a wispy cloud in the sky above.

"There's just so much to do in this world, you know?" Tsuna said, the sudden clarity of his words making him feel as though he and Hayato were alone in a bubble of sorts. "It never ends."

"This sort of place just makes it seem like it does," Hayato said, "If only for a moment. Coming here is like throwing your troubles into an abyss. They come back up and bite you, but for a little while, at least, you're at liberty to forget them." He sighed. "That's why I love places like this. When I travel, they're the first I try to find."

Tsuna squeezed Hayato's hand gradually tighter. "I don't want to leave here," he said, on some impulse he had not recognized until he had expressed it.

"Another thing, though, about these special places: somehow they always remain imprinted on your memory," Hayato said. "They're the only truly good things you ever remember."

Tsuna smiled. The mountains were a little ways away from the outskirts of Namimori. He had only been to this general area once or twice before, but he had neither been right here specifically nor appreciated this place at all until now. He recalled a time in fifth grade when he participated in a class discussion on the students' favorite spots in town, and he couldn't think of anything, so he just said, "My house." Now he had a real favorite place, and a love story to go with it, and knew that if he ever got asked that question again, he would answer differently. He shut his eyes for a few seconds, breathed deeply. His eyes opened to a somehow more vibrant sky.

Meanwhile Hayato reflected on his words. His thoughts turned his smile into a grimace. He grit his teeth and his hand went limp in the Tenth's. He became aware of his own heartbeat, his breathing, the heaviness in his head.

His eyes melted into sorrowful puddles as they pointed to the sky and fixed themselves there. "Do you know, what happened to me, when I was ten?" As soon as the words left his lips he hoped the wind had snatched them up and prevented them from reaching the Tenth's ears.

The Tenth turned his head slightly on its side. His eyes gravitated to Hayato's sunken profile. Still the same oval-shaped face and low bridge he loved to see, but his eyes were so much more serious than they normally were. They didn't seem cold or angry or determined. They seemed sad.

"I don't think so," Tsuna replied, apprehension in his voice.

Hayato sighed quietly, trying to expel guilt and depression and some panic.

"That summer I spent four weeks in a small town in eastern Spain," he began. "It was a shipping hub – cargo trains came through there all the time. More than half the people there worked for the railroad. The station was pretty developed for such a small place. That was kind of what brought me there: some trains had illegal loads – counterfeit goods, narcotics, guns – and there was a large underground transport network, so I could work with the gangs that ran it."

Tsuna nodded slightly in understanding, though Hayato barely noticed. The former kept his eyes on Hayato's face, but Hayato continued to stare intently at the sky. _There was no way he could look the Tenth in the eye while telling him this story._

"While I was there, I stayed with this girl named Lydia Suarez. She was twelve years old; she had flat feet, golden hazel eyes and dark brown hair that she always kept in a braid; and she sang hymns quietly to herself whenever she thought she was alone. It was just her and her single mother, but her mother worked three jobs and was never home, and Lydia never associated herself with any gang members really – she and I just sort of met randomly on the street and clicked, but. I got to sleep at her house four nights a week, and I stayed there or in the neighborhood pretty much all day, every day, when I wasn't down at the station negotiating things. I was Lydia's private project, her forbidden friend. Her mother never found out about me."

"Sounds like she was real nice," Tsuna said. The Tenth had a lilt of nostalgia in his voice despite just learning about this memory he himself had never experienced.

"She was my only friend then," Hayato said, "And she was very good to me." He paused briefly as he tried to recall her face, mentally piecing together even her most understated features. If his memory was correct, Lydia was quite a pretty girl, a classic kind of pretty. He hadn't thought so before. He never really regarded her that way.

"Anyway, I guess it was about three and a half weeks in when it happened. No, I _know_ because I left town three days later. Ah…." He stopped a minute, and unable to find the right way to tell this part of the story, closed his eyes. The memory flowed into his mind. Every single detail in chronological order. Clear. Painfully clear. He gulped to compose himself, and continued speaking, eyes still shut. Tsuna watched his Adam's apple move up and down slightly.

"One minute I was at the station, talking to this middle-aged man who mostly lifted and carried, and followed the trains wherever they went, squatting in the boxcars. The next…" Hayato's eyes opened to slits. His long, white eyelashes meshed over them for protection from the accusing sunlight. "I must have been knocked out or something. I woke up in some strange room, in a different bed, and I was wearing this jacket that I had never seen before – a dark green windbreaker, big-and-tall size, for adult men, you know. It was huge on me. It felt strange."

Tsuna moved slightly closer to Hayato, heart beating fast in the suspense.

"I was a little delirious, but I got up and walked out of the bedroom. The door was locked – I had to unlock it to get out. It was easy, though… I was in some guy's apartment, and he was in the kitchen cooking something when I came in. He was this huge dude with a week-old beard and arms as big around as tree trunks, but a weirdly high voice. I had no idea who he was or anything. He had a pot with a handle on the stove, filled with water that had just started boiling… He saw me… And…."

Hayato inhaled sharply, gnashing his teeth together, as pain crashed through his body. His eyes shut; his hand, shaking uncontrollably now, squeezed powerfully around the Tenth's. He felt the Tenth's nervous breathing on his neck. Hayato swallowed down the nightmare.

"… He… molested me."

He shuddered out the breath that had caught in his throat. The memory of the incident flooded into his head, its tide swelling, eating all other thoughts. The smell of steam on the stove, the dark clouds through the bars on the windows; he tried to back away but the look on that man's face had frozen him, and the man reached down and –.

"I knew he could have done even worse if I let him go on, so I ended up… grabbing the pot by the handle and smashing him over the head with it. Scalded him and knocked him out at the same time. I dropped it to the floor then and just got the hell out of there, ran back to Lydia's house."

Hayato's voice trembled in terror, anger, humiliation. Tsuna gasped in quiet horror and tried to hold back the tears that pricked at his eyes.

"I said nothing to her, but she knew. She knew just from looking at me. She told me she herself had been 'touched' too, when she was nine, by her mother's ex-boyfriend. She knew just how terrified and helpless and disgusted and violated I felt."

Tsuna's heart sank into the pit of his stomach. Hayato's hand loosened ever so slightly around his.

"She told me, too, how she dealt with it, and I guess I learned then that she was a closet pyromaniac: she took the dress she had worn when 'it' happened into the backyard, put a match to it and watched it burn. So that was what we did, with the man's jacket – I assumed it was his, anyway, but I was wearing it when it happened to me. For a long time after, I let myself believe that the experience was behind me, that everything about it was gone.

"Eventually I realized that destroying the jacket wasn't destroying the memory. Getting rid of the evidence did nothing to change the fact that it happened. It ate away at me and I tried almost too long to convince myself I was okay. No matter for symbols. The incident still haunted me. I had to come to terms with the thing itself instead of erasing something indirect."

A solitary tear rolled down from Tsuna's eye, across his cheek, dropping on a shining rock. Hayato's eyes peeked open only a little.

"Have you ever told anyone?" Tsuna whispered.

Face drooping into a frown, Hayato swallowed again, weakly rubbed his thumb up and down the Tenth's hand.

"Other than Lydia, you're the only person who knows," he said. "Getting molested is not exactly something someone goes around advertising." He chuckled forcibly, almost soundlessly. "I'm mostly over it, anyway. It still hurts to talk about, but I can do it without suffering too much. I can use it as an example. A lesson. It's not the only thing wrong, anyway – I have far more issues than that. I can't let it get me down too much."

Tsuna came closer to Hayato, nuzzling his head against his shoulder in the most empathy he had ever given. Hayato jumped at the touch, gasping quietly, and Tsuna felt the air rush in and saw his boyfriend's chest rise sharply. Tsuna almost retreated, but ended up in this position, holding the quivering Hayato.

"What worked for Lydia doesn't work for me. Symbolic things like burning clothes and screaming feel good when you do them," Hayato said, "But when you get down to it, you've done nothing but make a fool of yourself. His jacket is in ashes but I still feel it around me sometimes. You're here now but when you get back home you'll still have all the same problems.

"We try to throw all our worries off the end of the Earth. We forget that the Earth is round."

Hayato didn't end up staying in this position for long. He shrugged stiffly out of Tsuna's grip and sat up, pressing his hands on the rocks behind him, which hurt a little to do. Tsuna sat up with him, and quickly faced the other direction so he could remove the tiny tear on his cheek, before looking at his boyfriend again. Hayato had paled significantly; his lips shivered in a taut scowl. Although Hayato showed no signs of coming close to crying, his eyes displayed a tremendous sadness, a sense of loss – the greatest loss of all, the loss of innocence – that made his silence all the more poignant. He hunched forward weakly, taking his arms out from behind his back and wrapping them around the front of his abdomen. For half a second he felt the sensation of cheap leather brushing against his skin.

Tsuna had seen a similar reaction in Hayato once before, the day Hayato had told him about the lack of safety on a Glock, his first kill, and his aversion to strawberries. He could see the same pain written on his face. Hayato's past, however complicated and scary it was, (Tsuna knew he hadn't the slightest idea), was full of only bitter memories. And, as was the most undeniable trait of a past, it followed him everywhere, influenced his every thought, would never leave him until the day he would die. A bad past, Tsuna thought, was about the worst thing that a person could have. A bright future and a content present meant nothing if bad memories kept bogging someone down. Hayato claimed to have put it behind him, but he and Tsuna both knew that deep down a person could never _fully_ get over anything.

He almost didn't hear Hayato say quietly, "I guess I just kind of ruined this whole thing by being so depressing, didn't I?"

Tsuna would not change the subject again, like he had done last time Hayato opened his heart about his past. This time he would not dismiss it with silence and an ambiguous kiss. He whipped his arms around him and squeezed. He laid his chin over Hayato's shoulder. Hayato slowly raised his arms and set them on Tsuna's back, clutching his shirt weakly, lowered his head to Tsuna's level and pressed their cheeks together. At Hayato's trembling touch, Tsuna found he could not contain his tears anymore. Hayato felt a small, warm, wet stream crawl out of Tsuna's eye and run down the sides of their faces.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," Tsuna whispered. His quiet voice broke at the end. Hayato felt Tsuna's whimpering breath against his skin. Tsuna gulped. Hayato felt that too. He cradled the back of Tsuna's head in his loving, protective, reassuring left hand. His slender fingers tangled in the strands of Tsuna's hair.

"It's not your fault," Hayato breathed, just as much to Tsuna as to himself, his voice low and deep and silken in Tsuna's ear. Tsuna just pulled him closer, held him tighter. He moaned against Hayato's shoulder and the tears buckled out at double the rate.

Gokudera didn't consider at all the fact that the Tenth was crying over something that hadn't even happened to him, that had actually happened to Gokudera and _didn't_ make _him_ cry. Instead, he blamed himself. He thought himself despicable for saying something that upset the Tenth so much.

Meanwhile Tsuna felt bad enough for crying. He knew it wasn't his place to do so, but he couldn't help it. This was _his_ Hayato. He grieved for Hayato's lost innocence and cursed the mystery man who had caused so much pain. Tsuna felt guilty also for complaining about such petty issues when Hayato had been through so much worse yet still sympathized with Tsuna. Guilty, and blessed.

**LXX. Soul. **

With a kiss in closing, Hayato walked off again, but this time, he knew where he was going.

Children ran past him, eager and laughing and taking full advantage of the final hours of the free day's light. One had nearly touched Hayato as she rushed past. He smiled despite the rush of dizziness as he turned the street corner. He walked to the entrance of his most preferred hardware store, holding the door open for an elderly man before going in himself.

The clerk looked up from the computer screen to the two incomers. He grinned, flicking one strand of wet black hair from his forehead. "Hajima-san and Gokudera-kun, two of my best customers. Good to see you again." The elderly man nodded and Gokudera replied coolly, "Hey, Abe-san."

Gokudera laid his elbows and forearms on the counter and slouched. "Back so soon, eh? Did your medicine cabinet repair not turn out too well?" Abe asked.

"Actually, it's good as new," Gokudera said. "I have another project in mind, though, that I want to start."

"What is it?" Abe asked, intrigued, as he set his elbow on the counter, his chin in his palm.

Gokudera smirked. "It's a bit of a risk – but it's going to be a little secret of mine for a while."

"So you'd rather not say?"

"If that's all right with you," Gokudera said, a smirk setting a spark in his green eyes.

0o.o0o.o0

The arm of the hand holding the sledgehammer swung dramatically as he entered the place where he had woken this morning. A small, completely full duffle bag was tucked under his other arm, the straps pulling hard on his shoulder, leaving marks. He had pulled his silver hair into a ponytail. The dust swam thickly in the air, making him cough once.

Dropping the sledgehammer to the floor gently, Hayato aimed a toothy, apologetic grin downward. He knelt to the ground. The bag slid down his arm and he unzipped it upon its landing.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said in his native Italian, "But this is for your own benefit." He dragged his right hand along some of the old floorboards. When he lifted his hand again, he examined the dirt and dust on his bandages. His smile turned sweet as he patted the floor now. "You're beautiful," he whispered. "Don't forget that for a second."

Judging from the dust and decay of the place, he knew he had to take certain precautions. He snapped a mask over his mouth and nose, adjusted to the claustrophobic breaths, sealed the bag, grabbed the sledgehammer, and stood. His head rushed upon the sudden movement, amplifying the perpetual headache; he held the side of his head for a moment before he continued. He set his eyes on the dilapidated shelves clinging to the wall. The things had once been so proud to hold instruments of beauty. Now the purpose of their existence was long gone and they sat here alone, begging for death. They reminded him of the days he braved before he met the Tenth, when he stumbled along life's path alone, searching for a reason. The bruises, the tears, the sleepless nights. Sure, these shelves were inanimate objects. But he identified with them more than he did with almost any other person or thing. He figured himself a deliverer of mercy, because while he did eventually find a savior in the form of a small boy with fire in his big heart, these shelves could never again feel as whole.

He raised the hammer at an angle behind him, and then chuckled lightly as he realized he was holding the thing like a baseball bat. Which reminded him…. "You wanted me to find an alternative, Yamamoto?" he asked into the mask. He swung the sledgehammer back, poising himself on mostly one leg, preparing to strike.

"Well, here's your '_alternative_.'"

0o.o0o.o0

Fruitlessly chasing a chunk of food around his plate with the fork, Tsuna stared at his dissected meal. The others at the table kept up enough conversation for a large group. They barely noticed Tsuna's lack of participation. Nana peered over at him every few minutes, the look in his eyes repeatedly catching her attention. She took her drink cautiously in her hand and sipped.

"I feel so bored in school lately," Fuuta complained. "I already know pretty much everything they're teaching."

"Well, you're a smart kid, Fuuta. I had the same problem when I was your age. A lot of smart kids get bored in school," Bianchi said.

"What did you do, Bianchi-nee?" Fuuta asked.

"Grinned and bore it," she said. "Though that's not really what I'd recommend." She added a chuckle as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, exposing her gold earrings.

"Maybe I could take something up…" he pondered.

"It's always good to get a hobby –" she paused. "Erm, one that doesn't involve tampering with gravity." She set her elbow on the table. Her eyes were beginning to feel sleepy. They slowly read everyone's faces. Reborn listened intently and butted in at key points. Lambo and I-Pin had their own small, private food fight going in the corner. She couldn't quite identify the aura of the brown-haired boy sitting beside his tutor, though.

"What's on your mind, Tsuna?" she asked. It seemed to startle him a little. At first he didn't answer, just eyed her curiously. She realized that he had looked pale and slightly distraught before she had called his mind back to the present situation.

He blinked. "It's been a long day," he said quietly. He cleared his throat casually, released a silent sigh. Tsuna laid his fork down at the lip of his plate. His hands gripped the edge of the table. "May I be excused?" Upon Nana's hesitant nod, Tsuna stood from his seat, took his dishes to the sink to rinse, and shuffled out of the kitchen.

0o.o0o.o0

**So I have planned for the next chapter to be pretty much nothing but pointless and shameless fluff. It will have almost no plot advancement at all. Prepare yourselves. Schedule an appointment with your dentist. (;**

**I'm sorry this chapter took a while. I had most of it written for a long time, but a few of the sections dragged out for weeks because I just couldn't for the life of me figure out how to write them. **

**But I have come to a realization about this: I think I might be some sort of secret genius. Like, you know those AP English essays on style and rhetoric? I feel I could write one on this fic. I've put symbolism and extended metaphors and allusions and stuff I didn't even realize into this thing. Maybe I should take up writing, guys! XD **

**Seriously, though. Is this chapter okay? Is it good enough? I hope so, really. **

**(Oh, and… **_**Legend of Korra**_**. 8D)**


	8. These beautiful distractions

**Thanks for all the reviews, guys! **

**Finally, my first AP test is over! Now to celebrate with a new chapter~ :D What a coincidence that pretty much this whole chapter takes place on May 14, and I'm posting it on May 14, hahaha! (BTW, happy belated Mothers' Day!) **

**Chapter Eight: These beautiful distractions are very beautiful and distracting.**

**LXXI. Situational phoenix. **

Slumping onto the couch, Enma sighed, sore all over. He still felt so tense. His lips were burning. All the energy had been drained out of his stiff muscles.

"Hey, Enma," Adelheid said as she approached him, but then she stopped in her tracks. "I thought you said you were getting groceries."

He sank lower into the couch, the top of his red head disappearing behind the back cushions. "Something came up," he mumbled. The coils groaned underneath him.

Adelheid Suzuki grimaced. She walked cautiously toward her boss, peeking over the back of the couch at him once she was close enough, and, her frown deepening, she smoothed her skirt and sat down beside him, at the edge of the seat.

"You've been gone for hours," she said.

His feet lifted from the floor. He pulled his knees close to his chest, resting his hands and his chin on them. "I don't really want to talk about it." She could tell from the flush that came to his face, and how much quieter his already-quiet voice was, that he had been hurt. Yet he had no new wounds, no new bandages.

Her shoulders dropped. "You went to see Tsuna Sawada, didn't you?" she said.

"I said I don't want to talk about it," he said, turning away slightly.

She laid her hand on his lithe shoulder and then dragged it down to the small of his back. "Enma," she breathed, in a tone like that of a concerned mother. At first she couldn't think of anything else to say. "You know we'll always be there for you no matter what," she said. "I'll support you – the family will support you – in everything you do." He didn't move or acknowledge his right-hand woman at all.

0o.o0o.o0

Reborn lost track purposely, and minutes later he found his student sitting alone on the floor in the middle of his bedroom. He had taken his shirt off. The black cloak over his shoulders pooled all around him on the floor and melted his figure almost completely into the poignant shadows. He had not even turned on the lights. The door was barely ajar, the hallway just outside quiet and dark, so Reborn stood there and watched, leaning the side of his head against the doorway as one black eye peered inside. Normally he would have had no hesitation coming in, but he couldn't quite read the other boy's mind, and he had an aura that currently expressed a desire to be by himself.

At first the teen had tensed into a small, upright ball, covering himself almost completely with the cloak. He closed his eyes, hoping that the darkness would go away, but finding only more. Feeling his body emptying, he unfurled little by little, while breathing in, out, in, out, slower and slower.

His hand lifted from inside the abyss of the Mantello di Vongola Primo, an infant fire breathing in his palm and gradually growing in size until it completely engulfed the hand. He had no gloves or pills or anything. The hot core of the fire remained in the middle of his hand. Its flickers beat like a little heart. The flame seemed so small in the vast, deep black surrounding it, all traces of light wiped away at less than a foot beyond the source. Somehow the beacon possessed a sense of hope, of salvation, of unattainability, in its eerie stillness.

He held his open hand out completely still before him. After a long moment, his fingers began to move one at a time. He moved them in a wavelike motion, up and back down and back up, until he clenched his hand shut, closing off the light of the core, and in an instant, all traces of the fire disappeared. The darkness immediately reclaimed his hand, crushing any possible leftover signs of beauty, growing blacker throughout the room in vengeance.

Tsuna moaned and went limp, sprawling out on the floor. The cloak scrunched into a mound beneath his upper back and transformed into a little lion that clamored out from underneath him. It gave a strained meow and nuzzled the side of his face.

"Natsu," Tsuna said. He bent his forearm back and weakly scratched Natsu's neck. The lion leaned into the touch, but not in ecstasy so much as for some sort of consolation.

Closing his eyes – they still retained hints of a preternatural shade of orange in the normal brown color—, the human drew a profound sigh. It shook his whole body. As he wheezed out the breath, tiny embers flew from his mouth. The sparks crackled in midair for a very short moment before going out. His eyes slid open, stopped halfway. The hand petting the lion went still, and Natsu sat complacently in response, casting a reserved stare over his owner's body.

"Hayato told me something today." Reborn didn't know Tsuna had noticed him, but the latter's voice surely addressed him, and it was soft and bittersweet. Neither of them moved – Reborn's feet feeling heavy by the doorway, Tsuna prone on the floor in his murky bedroom.

"He said, 'We all try to throw our worries off the end of the Earth, but we forget that the Earth is round.' So no matter how hard people try to rid of their memories, there's no such thing as absolute recovery, or absolute atonement. These things follow us beyond death itself."

Reborn chewed the words in his mind. At length Tsuna sat up. Natsu hopped onto the bed and, curling into a dense ball, gazed forlornly over his paws in the direction of the opposite wall, though even with his superior vision he lost its definition.

His shoulders sinking, Tsuna got on his feet and walked like a breeze over to the far corner of the room. The black air swallowed him. Reborn didn't stir or attempt to pursue him, since he could faintly sense his student's familiar aura. He simply blinked into the darkness.

"I've been thinking about it, and it's a painful truth. I see it in everything all the sudden." He paused. "Although I would still like to pretend I can get rid of these problems."

"That's what makes you brave, Tsuna," Reborn finally said.

"Foolish, too," Tsuna added. His voice had darkened significantly. "I'm a fool." Reborn grimaced, looked away, and nodded.

**LXXII. "You realize, if we played by the rules, right now, we'd be in gym?"  
><strong>(from _Ferris Bueller's Day Off_) 

His first dreamless night in _months_.

He exhaled, sitting up almost immediately after waking, and set his dry forearms on the back of the couch. He blinked at the window. The sunrays washed over him; they seemed to make him glitter. He could feel it. He took another deep breath and sighed into a smile.

This was the start of a new day. A brighter day. A fresh step onto a new path.

The pain was still there – it was always there, the profound ache in his head, like grinding rusty gears, and the sore muscles and the violent stomach and the deadweight of exhaustion – but somehow it seemed insignificant, as though he were less conscious of it, as if it had boundaries in place.

Gokudera practically melted back into the horizontal position. He adjusted the blanket over him, reached for the folded pair of glasses on the coffee table, and blinked in rapid succession as he put them over his face. Gradually he rose from the couch, and while rubbing the back of his neck and taking extra time to graze his fingers over the inked Vongola Seal there, shuffled over to the kitchen counter, where his BlackBerry was plugged in.

0o.o0o.o0

After hammering his palm down on the snooze button for the fifth time that morning, a groggy Tsuna, who was lying on his stomach, groaned into his pillow. Exhaustion had claimed him so suddenly last night that he hadn't even bothered removing his jeans or pulling a blanket over himself. Natsu, whose sleep went affected by neither noise nor movement, remained sprawled at the end of his owner's bed. Reborn was already quite awake, however, and decided he had had about enough of his student's laziness.

He set his pudgy hands on his hips. "Tsuna, it's a Monday and you have a text message. Get up before I kick you in the face." He gritted his teeth and added, "You know I will."

Tsuna groaned again. His legs drifted off the edge of the bed. The entire bottom half of his body had melted off the bed, and he stopped.

"Come on," Reborn coaxed.

His student slid off further and he fell weakly onto the floor. It hurt a little but he didn't even care.

"Well, that's a start," Reborn said to himself. He realized instantly that this could have meant he was actually getting _soft_, so to invigorate both himself and the young Vongola boss, Reborn swiftly smacked him hard in the back of the head.

This startled Tsuna and brought him to rub his head sorely. He twisted around to face his tutor. He knew better than to question his tutor over his methods or motives anymore – instead he asked, "What text message?"

"Why don't you look?" He gestured at the nightstand where the iPhone sat.

In no real hurry, Tsuna grabbed his cell phone off the edge of the surface and pressed the circular button at the bottom with his thumb. When the screen lit up to show the message, he blinked at it immediately and slid-to-unlock. He stared at the words at first, just stared, his heart fluttering. He started next at the first word of the message and followed them along to the end. Then he stared again at the sentence as a whole. After a minute he grinned and said, "Aw."

"What is it?" Reborn asked, even though he had a hunch – one that proved to be correct when his student proudly displayed the name on the screen. Message from Hayato Gokudera:

_Happy one-month anniversary, Tenth_

Tsuna took the phone back. "Isn't that sweet?" he said.

Reborn scoffed. "You're turning into such a girl. Just because you're dating a boy doesn't mean you need to be so girly now."

Tsuna furrowed his eyebrows, set the iPhone back on the nightstand (as the screen went black), and leaned forward defensively. "I'm not acting that girly…!" he said, but after a few seconds of consideration, he blinked the intent out of his face. "Oh, God," he breathed, "I am turning into a lovey-dovey schoolgirl."

Nodding curtly, Reborn turned on his heels and headed out the bedroom door. "Get dressed," he commanded. The door shut behind him, finally stirring Natsu.

Tsuna stared at the closed door for about a minute and then smiled dryly. He rose to his bare feet, stretched dramatically, ruffled Natsu's mane, and sauntered over to the dresser. Today, the 14th of May, was going to be a good day.

0o.o0o.o0

The doorbell rang, followed by light footsteps coming out of the kitchen. I-Pin's slanted eyes stared up at him, and he felt a quick sting of stomach acid, but swallowed it down forcefully. _Not now, not today, God help him._

"_Ni hao_, I-Pin." Even though he was a little clumsy in the language, Hayato Gokudera could manage to communicate with the little girl in her native Chinese, "Is the Tenth still home?"

She regarded the relaxed expression on his naturally graceful face, the oversized sweatshirt that dominated his frame, and the particularly animated way the color of the sky shown on his fair hair, and nodded in her own timid way. He smiled down at her gently. Nana shuffled over to the front door.

"Ah, Hayato-kun, good morning," she greeted, and then she paused and briefly examined his appearance. "My," she said in conclusion, "You look very handsome in those glasses."

"Thank you, Maman," he said, and he suddenly became very conscious of the weight of the things. "Would you mind if I came in?"

"Not at all," she said, ushering him inside. I-Pin disappeared into the kitchen to finish her breakfast. Nana closed the door behind Hayato, who removed his shoes, as was customary. He could feel the coolness of the floor through his socks, though it didn't affect him. He shyly slid his hands into the front pocket of his sweatshirt.

"So, what's the occasion?" Nana asked, identifying the look in his eyes.

"Actually, I wanted to ask you something," he said. The very second he finished the sentence, however, one of the doors opened on the second floor, and Tsuna's voice came to them.

"Mom, I can't find my t—" When his head appeared at the top of the stairs, the rest of his body following (obviously in the process of getting dressed as his shirt was wrinkled and untucked and his pants had no belt), he instantly froze in the sight of the other teenage boy standing by the front door with his hands lifting out of his pocket.

"_Hi, Tenth." _

"Hayato!" Tsuna rushed toward him, flying down the stairs, threw his arms around his sinewy shoulders, and kissed him voraciously. Hayato wrapped his arms low around Tsuna's lithe back. Nana shook her head at them in a nostalgic and not necessarily disapproving manner. "Happy anniversary," Hayato said breathlessly just as their lips broke apart. His hands moved to the Tenth's upper arms.

"Happy anniversary," Tsuna replied, got greedy, and kissed him again.

Nana cleared her throat blatantly, interrupting them. The boys eyed her. She raised an eyebrow. "Anniversary?" she asked.

"Our first date was a month ago today," Tsuna explained.

Her eyebrow lowered, but the uncomfortable half-smile on her face didn't go away until her son and his boyfriend separated wholly. "Maman," Hayato said politely, "If I could borrow your son for the day in order to celebrate, I'd be much obliged."

"'Borrow'?" She smirked. "The whole day?"

He nodded. Tsuna grinned widely, hopefully, glancing back and forth between Hayato's attractive profile and his mother.

"Since you're out of uniform, I guess I can assume you'll skip school if I say yes," she remarked, looking the pale boy up and down.

"I wouldn't go today even if you said no," he said, a clever glint in his eyes. She knew he meant it.

She paused before this next question. "What exactly would you do plan on doing, then, if you won't be in school?" she asked.

"Well," Hayato said innocently, putting his arm around the Tenth's shoulders to draw him closer, "I've set up a dinner reservation at five-thirty. Aside from that I don't have anything official in mind."

The mother grimaced. At first she didn't quite understand why Hayato wanted to skip school when the only thing that he had planned would happen after school hours anyway. And then it hit her, hard, in the worst part of the brain it could possibly hit.

_Sex. _

_They're going to have sex. _

_Oh dear God. _

She swallowed hard and immediately forced the image – of her son, of her beloved baby boy and his lover's stark-naked bodies arched against one another in ecstasy – out of her head. Everything he had done in the past few minutes since he rang the doorbell, every single little thing, fell under thorough review in her mind, even the subtlest hints of what she presumed was his motive being counted against him. She began to grit her teeth, but realizing that it would probably show, she forced herself to stop.

Humming once in thought, she touched her fist to her chin and squinted at the two teens. Hayato winced slightly under her inspection, but Tsuna, more confident, slinked one arm around Hayato's waist, making sure that his mother noticed such an action. This only increased her sense of panic, though.

Finally her shoulders drooped at the conclusion of a thought. "The younger kids really are going to school today, unlike you two, and I actually have errands to run and other things to go out and do, so…" She craned her neck in the general direction of the kitchen. She called Bianchi's name, and the young woman appeared. Hayato averted his eyes right away, feeling a sickly dread wash over him at her mere presence.

"You wanted me, Maman?" she said and popped a grape into her mouth.

"Do you think we can postpone our plans for tomorrow?" Nana asked, pointing to the boys. "I need you to babysit them and make sure no funny business goes down."

Bianchi shrugged. "Sure," she said. She shot a mischievous grin at Hayato, though he didn't really see it.

Tsuna looked indignant. "Babysit? Mom, we're sixteen."

"Exactly," Nana snapped. "You're a teenage gay couple, it's your anniversary, and you'd otherwise be home alone. Is there any reason why I _should_ trust you?"

A guilty feeling grew in the pit of Hayato's stomach. He couldn't speak, merely shrank slightly and subtly pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose only to have them fall back to the same level again.

"_Mom_!" Tsuna protested, but the women were already walking away. He sighed and looked at Hayato, who faced him in turn. "Does she really think we'd…?" he whispered.

"I guess so," Hayato replied. His eyes darted nervously in some other direction, and he bit his bottom lip. Tsuna shut his eyes briefly and exhaled. He kissed Hayato's cheek and then laid his head on Hayato's shoulder, bringing the pale boy's attention back to the shorter.

"It doesn't matter," the Tenth said. "Today's gonna be great." He nestled his face partially into his elegant neck. Hayato gave him a soft kiss on the hair. Tsuna threw his other arm around the boy. Within a minute they fell into a full embrace, tender enough to keep their eyes and lips sealed and their breaths slow.

It ended after a few minutes when they heard the stampede of small feet coming their way. They broke apart to watch the procession of uniform-clad children emerge from the kitchen.

Lambo stomped up to them. "What's Stupidera doing here?" he said.

"The Tenth and I are taking a day off," Hayato answered calmly, to throw him off.

I-Pin quietly held his backpack out to Lambo, but he initially refused to take it. "Why do you get to stay home? I don't wanna go to school either!"

"Tsuna-kun and Hayato-kun are more mature, Lambo," Nana explained. "They get to make that kind of decision. You might be able to do that too when you're their age." She forced his backpack on him and patted him on the back a few times to get him to move. I-Pin led him out onto the front porch.

_Yeah_, Tsuna thought bitterly, _We're so mature we need Bianchi to 'babysit' us. _His inner ranting stopped short when Fuuta looked up at him with those hopeful, nearly otherworldly eyes of his. "Tsuna-nii?" Tsuna met his gaze as if to say, _Yes?_

"I meant to ask you last night," the Ranking Prince said shyly, "Ahm. What do you do when you're bored in school?"

Tsuna pondered a short moment on the answer – he wanted to be at least a decent role model for that little brother-figure.

"Ah, well, I… doodle, actually," he said. "I sketch things. On the margins of my notes."

"Really?" Fuuta said, as if in awe.

Tsuna nodded modestly. "They're just little drawings, I mean – I just kind of do them. I'm not, like, insanely good at it or anything. Drawing. I do mostly stick figures and random things. One time I was so bored I drew everything that was sitting on the teacher's desk."

"That's so cool!" Fuuta said. "Would you show me some when I get home?"

"Ah, sure, I suppose – b-but I'm not really that good," Tsuna affirmed.

Nana ushered Fuuta out the door, then she grabbed her purse from the coat rack. "I'm off too," she said to the teens. "Be good."

"We will," Tsuna said dutifully, though it didn't ease any of her suspicions. She gave them a cynical smirk and closed the front door behind her.

With Bianchi in the other room and Nana just out the door, the two boys faced each other, smiled, and kissed.

"I didn't know you drew things," Hayato said.

Tsuna blushed. "Ah… I don't really think about it." Truthfully, he doodled more in class than any studious part of him would have liked to, and he remembered all the sketches he had done more than the actual notes in the notebook; and he frequently used the innately gorgeous Hayato as his unaware, candid model. No one had ever seen the amateur art except for Tsuna himself, so he didn't have any critiques to boost his confidence in his skills.

"I'd love to see some, if you would let me," Hayato said.

Tsuna clamped his hands together. "Y-yeah, if you want. Sure," he said enthusiastically. "Erm, I think I left my notebook up in my room. I should probably get dressed into some other clothes first, though. Can you wait a couple minutes?"

"Of course," Hayato said. Tsuna nodded and raced up the stairs.

As if on a cue, Bianchi came into view, wearing a pair of glasses. "Hey, look, Hayato," she said, "We match." Of course, her glasses had bright red frames with a tiny plastic flower in the corner, and they barely made a difference in her vision – they were more for fashion than necessity. But she knew of her brother's condition, knew that he couldn't look at her face if she didn't have anything covering it in some way, so she decided to cut him some slack.

Hayato returned his hands to his pocket again as he faced his approaching half-sister.

She frowned sympathetically at him. "You feeling okay?" she asked. She reached for his shoulder, but he jerked away from her instantly.

"What's with that, all the sudden?" he said. "Why do you care?"

"I always care," she said. Which was right. She did. She knew he did too. He didn't respond to her, however, only glaring at some angle slightly away from her eyes.

She sighed. "Look. I'm _guessing_ that with everything I know Maman has to do, she'll be _home_ around _two o'clock_. I _suggest_ that if you and Tsuna _do_ anything, you should _go ahead_ and _do it_ and get rid of all the _evidence_ by two o'clock. I'm not gonna stop you." She winked at him. He just shot her an irritated and slightly confused look. "Now, if you two need anything, I'll be in the den," Bianchi said. "I have a soap opera to catch up on."

She brushed past her brother and sauntered down the hallway to the den. Hayato turned on to watch her walk, but she had gotten only a few steps away when he said something that stopped her: "You've changed a lot, you know, Sis."

Peering over her shoulder, she smiled drolly at his fuzzy figure in her peripheral. For an instant she saw the boy he used to be in his place, fragile and wan and promising and bright and hopeful and delightfully, innocently curious. The image became replaced by the current Hayato, who wasted his beautiful face on a perpetual scowl, all innocence faded to fear and anger and sorrow and pain in his eyes. In the five years that had passed between the day he ran away from the castle and the day she found him again, Hayato had become a completely different person. He was so different that she didn't even recognize him at first – he had grown up so much, both physically and mentally, since she had last seen him. This Hayato Gokudera, who she had known for a little over two years now, may as well not have been her brother at all. It unnerved her greatly, though she would never say so to him. She knew he wouldn't want to talk about it.

"You have too," she replied. Her eyes shut as she began to move forward again and realized that the similarities between the old Hayato and the new were much more concerning than anything else.

**LXXIII. I don't think that has anything to do with your susceptibility to twisters.  
><strong>_(* = Based on a comic from the Cyanide & Happiness series. ** = Based on a post on the Ask Tuna-yoshi Tumblr page. I don't own either of these things.) _

"Ah," Tsuna mused, but he fell silent when he pulled the spiral notebook out of his backpack. He examined the corners of the cover. They had already worn so much, and most of the pages inside had been filled, and he was still only in the first trimester of this school year. He nervously held it out to Hayato. "Th-this is it."

Hayato took the thing with both hands. Tsuna tugged at his own shirt collar without thinking while the other boy gently opened the notebook, immediately remarking every detail of the graphite that polluted the first page. It was rather boring compared to what the Tenth had led on. Hurried Japanese lettering, crammed into bullet points, lining the entire sheet, with no eccentricities whatsoever. Then he looked on the back.

An intricate pencil sketch of the Tenth himself, Hayato, Yamamoto, Hibari and Ryohei, standing loosely together, noble and battle-weary in the middle of a barren field, the silhouettes of scorched trees behind them, ash falling to a slow and ominous dance in the wind all around them. The proportions, the clothing, the faces, everything looked exactly like the real people. The shading and shadow looked masterful. The emotion of the picture nearly overwhelmed him. It carried a certain unnamable sense, not too far from desolation, driven toward a distant glowing hope. For a second, Hayato forgot how to breathe.

"Tenth," he said, his face paling, "This is…"

"Crappy, I know," Tsuna said. He turned his face away.

"N-no!" Hayato held the notebook high. "_Quite_ the opposite, Tenth! You…" He held the picture up to the Tenth, who blinked once at it. "You did this, right?"

Tsuna nodded.

"You are _incredibly _talented," Hayato said. "I never would have known you were such a capable artist."

Blushing, Tsuna's lips spread into an unsure smile. "R-really? You're not just saying that to flatter me, are you?"

"Not at all, Tenth. I mean it. This is…" Hayato said, shaking his head. He couldn't think of the right word for it. "…How come you never showed anybody?"

"I've always been kind of embarrassed by it," Tsuna admitted. Hayato flipped through more of the pages, and instantly he began to see a slow change in the notes – on the second page, a short comic between two distinctive stick-people played out on the furthest margin.

_(Person A: "Hey, where are your glasses?"  
>Person B: "I got laser eye surgery."<br>Person A: "Does it hurt?"  
>Person B: "I dunno, you tell me."<br>Person B proceeded to shoot Person A in the face with laser-beams that came out of his eyes.)_*****

Hayato chuckled softly. He peeked at the back of this page, where there was a cute picture that captured the essence of youth of Lambo and I-Pin sitting on the floor, playing with Legos together. Tsuna knew right away which picture Hayato was looking at. "That one, ah, I was in the living room with everyone one night, and I told my mom I was doing my homework, but really I was just drawing Lambo and I-Pin playing," he explained.

"It's great," Hayato said just as earnestly as before. On the back of the next page, Tsuna and a tired-looking Enma in very cartoonish form, walking side-by-side, probably to school (they were wearing Nami Middle uniforms), and Tsuna was saying, "Did you understand the math homework at all last night?" and Enma was saying, "We had math homework?" and the date _6 April 2012 _had been scribbled in the bottom left corner.**** **The next page, a picture of sunlight streaking through a windowpane to pierce a shadow. The next, Hibari's pet bird Hibird perched at the end of a branch on a blossoming cherry tree, with lyrics to the Namimori School Anthem etched at the top of the paper. Next, the picture he had described to Fuuta, the entire surface of the teacher's desk from the viewpoint of Tsuna's seat in the classroom. Hayato flipped through them all in content silence, scrutinizing them, only to find that each one impressed him more than the last. Even the tiniest, most insignificant inanimate objects had had souls bestowed upon them in these drawings. Meanwhile Tsuna sat at the other side of the small, low table in his room, fidgeting anxiously. He supposed that Hayato probably was the best option for first person to see his forbidden artwork. Small children wouldn't understand some of the concepts or humor, acquaintances or his other friends might judge him harshly or think him weird, and his mother would probably disregard any amount of quality in the work over the fact that he should have used this notebook for actual notes. Still, he felt nervous. He considered his art very personal.

Hayato smiled sweetly, lowering the notebook onto the table surface. "Tenth, these are incredible," he said. He looked his boss in the eye, which made Tsuna jump ever so slightly. "When did you learn how to draw so well?"

"A-ah," Tsuna said, shrinking in his place, "I don't…." He shrugged desperately. _I don't know._

"See, I draw too, but mostly technical stuff, like blueprints and diagrams. I'm not all that good at drawing people – at least not without trying really hard and taking long and revising it a million times," Hayato said. He chuckled humbly.

Tsuna nodded in understanding. Hayato was quite good. He had seen his art a few times before, actually, though never with Hayato's consent, and never for longer than just a couple seconds. Usually he would just notice Hayato scribbling Vongola Base layouts in class and briefly peek over his shoulder to see them before he noticed.

Looking back down at the notebook, Hayato began to turn the page – just as Tsuna remembered what he had sketched there. He threw his arms across the table, blocking Hayato's hand. "O-okay-y, that's enough," Tsuna said.

Hayato let him pull away the notebook, though a disappointed look came onto his face as he protested, "What? Why?"

"It's just – the rest are really embarrassing," Tsuna explained quickly.

Hayato sighed. "Nonsense! I'm sure they look great, Tenth," he said.

Tsuna gulped, clutching the notebook tighter. _Well, yeah, they do, since the subject…_ He could feel the pages wrinkling. Then, all at once, his muscles loosened.

"Promise you won't get creeped out," Tsuna ventured, licking the corner of his lips nervously.

"I'm sure I won't," Hayato said.

Tsuna leaned back, running a fingertip down the spiral. "I, um. Drew. _You_. M-many times, actually."

Hayato smiled wider and crookedly at this, and Tsuna wasn't quite sure whether it was out of disgust, flattery, shock, exasperation – maybe some combination of these things. But he felt reassured when Hayato started to laugh a little – a rare sound from him, small, albeit genuine, and utterly magical.

"I'm sorry," Tsuna said, purely out of reaction, as Hayato's laugh ceased. "It's just, you're so beautiful, you really are. Drawing you is so hard to resist, you know?"

"Well, Oscar Wilde did say, 'Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter,'" Hayato replied. "I'm really flattered, Tenth."

"S-so, you want to see?"

"If you want me to," Hayato said.

He hesitated. The edges of the paper wrinkled under his grip, the graphite smudged under his fingers. Clenching his teeth, he flipped the page over and displayed the sketch of his boyfriend.

Hayato blinked at it hard. "Wow," he breathed. "You actually made me look _good_."

It was an exquisite piece, showing Hayato sitting at his school desk, with his elbow on the desk surface and his cheek perched gently on his fist. He was wearing his school uniform, modified with various accessories. His earrings, rings, necklaces, bracelets glimmered as though they were real. His hair swept breezily along the back of his neck and the sides of his head. A pencil was poised between two of his long fingers. His face appeared stoically content, gazing off into the infinite distance, as if he were pondering the universe's very existence. _Was that really how the Tenth saw him? Did other people see him this way too? _

"There's more," Tsuna said, rather gravely for some reason. He held the notebook downward slightly, flipped over two pages, folded it back, and presented him the next drawing. Hayato's profile, enlarged over the entire page, down to the tiniest gorgeous detail. Eyes half-lidded, lips relaxed; a mild shadow fell over part of his face.

The Tenth continued to show him portrait after portrait. One page was entirely filled with a montage of his various expressions. One page had his whole body (along with Basil's on the other side) in a candid pose, mid-stride or dismounting from some invisible object. One drawing was of him from the back, sitting at his school desk again. One portrait showed him dressed in a black suit, his hair in a ponytail, with Uri standing alert beside him and his Sistema C.A.I. in action. Hayato just stared at the pictures, regarding them in quiet awe.

Finally, Tsuna withdrew the notebook to his lap, averting his eyes from anywhere near Hayato. "So, yeah," he mumbled.

There was a pause, and Tsuna's shame and self-depreciation exploded, debris flying beyond the ceiling.

"You're really too much, Tenth," he heard Hayato say. "To draw me in such a complimentary way… you have talent. I know you're not too sure of yourself, but you have a talent, there, a real talent, and you shouldn't be embarrassed of it."

He looked up and Hayato's lips quivered into a gracious smile for him, though judging by the intense red on his cheeks and his eyes that quickly darted away, Tsuna had not been so reassured.

Hayato sighed. "I myself am a musically-oriented person," he said. "I get it from my mother. She was a pianist, you know? And when I was a kid, I played the piano too. And the cello. And the guitar. And I sang. Heh."

The Tenth met eyes with him again. "Do you still do that?" he asked.

Hayato half-shrugged. Then he shook his head. "No." He stirred, and Tsuna leaned forward, and then Hayato sank, lying flat on his back with his knees bent up. "Things have come up," he said from his position on the floor. He brought his hands beneath his head. "I grew up and realized I can't spend my whole life sitting on a piano bench. Life can't be that simple. Maybe once I settle down, and things get better, I'll get back into music. But until then…" Hayato trailed off.

Tsuna's shoulders sank, and his head went weakly to the side.

"…Maybe," Hayato sighed. "Ah, maybe."

Quietly Tsuna set the opened notebook on the table, and he moved around the corner, closer to his boyfriend. He sat beside Hayato's head.

**LXXIV. The difference between real and virtual images. **

Giggling to himself, Tsuna leaned over Hayato's horizontal body, staring down at his angelic face. He poised his fingers over the arms of Hayato's glasses and slowly slid them off. Hayato did nothing to protest. He only blinked curiously up at his boyfriend's blurry face once the latter had completely removed the bifocals from in front of his eyes. Tsuna set them gently on the floor. Then he leaned over further, and he got so close that Hayato had to close his eyes. He kissed Hayato's eyelids one at a time, brushing and pawing gently at the long hair fanned out around his face.

When Tsuna sat up again, he grabbed Hayato's glasses and set them on his own face. His lips immediately fell ajar at the shock. He cast worried looks about the room, marveling at how blurry and distorted every single thing was.

"Tenth," Hayato said cautiously, "Are you trying on my glasses?" His pale face stiffened, his blank eyes stared helplessly at the vague ceiling.

"Yeah," Tsuna said.

Hayato smirked crookedly. "I'd tell you how cute you look in them, but, ah, I really _cannot_ see."

"No kidding," Tsuna replied. He peered down at Hayato's face and could not even make out where his face ended and his hair began – let alone any specific features. "Do things always look this fuzzy when you don't have your glasses on?"

"Unfortunately," Hayato replied. "I really hate wearing glasses, though. They're just so _inconvenient._ Like, they have to be cleaned constantly, and they're easy to break, and they can fall off, and just – that's why I like contacts much better."

"Why aren't you using your contacts today, then?" Tsuna asked.

"Because I took them out last night and put them in the case, like I normally do, but I was lazy and made the mistake of leaving the case on the bathroom counter overnight. I'm pretty sure my cat knocked it off the counter and messed with it. She's done that before with other things. Nothing is safe. I should have known better. This morning I could not, for the life of me, find the damn thing. I have other pair, but I was already running late, anyway, so I just left my glasses on."

"Oh, I know where you're coming from," Tsuna said. "Remember that end-of-year biology project we had?"

Hayato nodded. "That one where we had to make a model of a human body system," he said, to jog his own memory. Hayato himself had chosen the nervous system, since he already knew pretty much everything there was to know about the nervous system, and as with every other assignment he had ever done, received an A+. In fact, the teacher wanted to keep his model as an example for that next year's students.

"Yup. Lambo destroyed mine," Tsuna said matter-of-factly. He hit his hand impatiently against his leg. "I was so furious. I swear that child is an animal." Hayato remembered that incident too, and while Tsuna had been quite upset, he still had another week to rebuild the project before the due date.

Hayato laughed. "You got that right." The Tenth laughed in return. Sighing out of the laughter, he took Hayato's glasses off his face and slowly put them back over Hayato's eyes. As the Tenth's precious face finally came back into focus, Hayato couldn't stop the development of a smile. His hands flew up to the arms of his bifocals, adjusting them briefly. The Tenth's smile rained like sunbeams down on him.

"There," Hayato said with a refreshed tone, "_Now_ I can see you." Then his expression went flat.

"Did I smudge the lenses at all?" Tsuna asked nervously.

"A little, but it's alright. Easily fixable." He took the glasses back off his face, sat up, and wiped each lens with the hem of his shirt. He held the bifocals up to the light, squinting at them, examining them, before giving them a satisfied nod and replacing them over his nose.

"How long have you had glasses?" Tsuna asked. His eyes gazed through the glass to meet Hayato's.

"About five years," he answered. "I needed them earlier than when I got them, but for a long time I didn't have the time or the money to go to the eye doctor. And I was kind of in denial, too, of the fact that I had trouble seeing. After a while I couldn't read, couldn't make out faces, couldn't do anything, and Shamal saw how miserable I was and took me to see his optometrist friend." Hayato's expression turned sentimental as he faced away from the Tenth at an angle. "The day I got my glasses, I was so happy I could see again that I almost cried."

"I'm sure I'd cry," Tsuna said. "Not able to see anything – that sounds really suckish. And dangerous."

"I had to rely heavily on my hearing," Hayato said, tapping the side of his head with his index finger. "It's actually pretty amazing how the impairment of one sense can heighten all the others. I was pretty much blind for a while, but I could hear a pin drop in a crowded street. God takes a little and then He gives a little. I guess He just didn't want me to be deaf." He cleared his throat and brought one knee to his chest.

He could feel the Tenth's warm eyes studying him so he turned to look at him. Tsuna had a charming, infatuated, compassionate grin on his face that made him even cuter than he usually was. Hayato smiled gently back at him in response. Tsuna sighed.

"You're just so amazing," Tsuna said. "Everything about you amazes me."

"No, Tenth, you're the amazing one," Hayato replied, a humble glint forming his eyes.

Tsuna rose to his knees and draped his arms around his right-hand man's chest, pressing the side of his face against Hayato's. He could feel the cold metal arms of the glasses pressing into his skin. He leaned in slightly and kissed the corner of Hayato's mouth. Hayato turned his head to return a kiss directly on the lips and both their sets of eyes closed. The Tenth's arm bent upward and his hand lifted to the top of Hayato's head, where his fingers sifted through the silver strands. Hayato gripped the Tenth's shoulder.

The kiss ended. Their eyes opened to slits. They touched the tips of their noses together. Tsuna's left hand dropped and he put it over his boyfriend's bandaged hand on the floor while he kept his right fingers between strands of silver. "What if we're an amazing _couple_?" Tsuna said with a tingling, breathy chuckle.

"I think that works," Hayato replied, "Although you are the source of most of the amazing."

Tsuna just laughed and went in for another long kiss. As Hayato softly laid his palm on the other boy's cheek, the hand slowly creeping around the back of his head, it struck the Vongola Boss just how human the two of them were.

**LXXV. Once upon a time I knew you. **

Sunlight had officially penetrated the whole house. The subtle light took away most of Bianchi's lethargy as she emerged from the den with a large bowl, now empty, once filled with kettle corn. (She had no shame in eating such a thing before noon.)

She came into the kitchen and right away her eyes fell on the two boys sitting at the table. Stiffening slightly, she lowered the bowl into the sink and waltzed over to them.

"Hey, guys," she said, in a way to suggest she hadn't seen either of them in days.

Hayato and Tsuna sat opposite each other at the table. Tsuna was staring intently at the chessboard between them, speculating quietly on each piece and its position. Hayato looked up at his sister. "I'm teaching the Tenth how to play chess," he explained.

Bianchi scoffed. "Good luck," she said sarcastically. Hayato frowned.

She stood beside Tsuna at an angle and leaned, and observed the board for only a moment. "You're black, right, Tsuna?"

"Mm-hm," Tsuna replied, his focus shifting only slightly from the game to her.

Reaching her arm in front of Tsuna's view, Bianchi daintily took one of Tsuna's pawns and moved it one cautious space forward. She retreated her hand, and Tsuna furrowed his eyebrows at the pawn, trying to figure out why she made that move.

"All the other options are pretty much the same," she said. "As difficult as you might think this is, though, believe me, Hayato's going easy on you." She pulled out the chair next to Tsuna's and seated herself.

Hayato moved his knight very deliberately, making sure the Tenth noticed what he did with it, and once he had set the piece down he faced his sister.

"You think he's going _easy_ on me?" Tsuna said.

Bianchi nodded. "Reminds me of when he and I used to play chess together, when we were younger." She diverted her attention to the board for a second, pointing to one of Tsuna's pieces and suggesting, "If you move this here, then on the next turn, you could capture Hayato's knight," quietly to him, and Tsuna complied with the move. Then she set her chin in her palm and stared hard at her brother, who stared hard back at her.

"I learned how to play chess from one of my teachers at the parochial school I used to attend," she said, "And the day I got home from school after learning it, I taught it to Hayato. Big mistake."

Hayato rolled his eyes and slid his bishop to C-4.

"That's the only time I have ever beaten him at chess – the very first time. And it doesn't even really count because it was his first time playing it and I was still explaining the rules to him, and I had said at the beginning that it was 'practice.' Every match since then he's beaten the pants off of me." She leaned back in her chair. "You have no idea how humiliating it was for me, a ten-year-old girl, to be beaten repeatedly in a mind-game by my five-year-old brother. Many nights I would go to bed and map out what I thought would be the best chess strategy ever, something fool-proof that would beat him for sure, and the next day I would try it out and _nope_. Every. Single. Time. I could never win. Hayato could even beat adults at chess. And what got me the most was that he made it look so thoughtless, so easy."

Bianchi's moss-colored eyes met Hayato's moss-colored eyes. They glared at one another in a deadlock until Bianchi shook her head. "You used to frustrate the hell out of me," she said.

"You know, if you want to, Sis," Hayato said, "Once this game is over, you could play me. I don't think we've played chess together at all since we came to Japan." He crinkled his nose a little, his glasses bobbing up and down at the motion.

She smiled. "You're right, we haven't," she said. "Okay, then. I challenge you."

Tsuna smirked down at the chessboard. _No pressure on me or anything_, he thought. He pondered for a minute, then grazed his fingertips over the rook he had moved in just the previous turn.

"Go ahead, Tenth," Hayato said, suddenly taking on a friendly tone again. He bit the inside of his cheek and knocked over Hayato's knight. "There," Hayato said. "See? You've already taken one of my knights and I haven't even taken any of your pieces yet." It made Tsuna smile sheepishly.

Bianchi half-smirked to herself, chuckling inside at the false hope Hayato had given his boss. _The object isn't to capture the most pieces. It's to trap the king. _

The game went on for about fifteen minutes more, Bianchi observing, and she felt quite bored. Hayato's strategy against Tsuna was so simple and cliché. Either he was going insultingly easy on the first-timer or he had lost a massive amount of brain cells at some point. He was basically moving Tsuna's pieces for him, making valid suggestions at every turn and leaving his own pieces overtly vulnerable. Alas, the white king became surrounded, and Tsuna mumbled, "Uh, ch-checkmate?" Hayato smiled, knocked his own king onto its side with a sweep of his finger, and congratulated him.

"Nice job, Tsuna," Bianchi said, stifling a yawn. "Now, mind if we switch seats so I can beat the ever-loving crap out of your boyfriend?"

Tsuna glanced at the young woman, then at Hayato. "We can play again later," Hayato said. Tsuna nodded and rose from his chair. He whispered a sweet thank-you in Hayato's ear and left for an adjacent room. He would return after only a minute to witness, as an only child, sibling rivalry at its finest, seating himself unobtrusively in the chair at the end of the table, where the epic battle could unfold up-close.

Bianchi and Hayato sorted the pieces into their proper starting positions, all the while stealing suspicious glances at one another. Once they had finished the setup, Bianchi regarded the board in silence, charting her beginning strategy, trying to predict Hayato's thoughts before the match even commenced. Her concentration was thrown when Hayato gripped the sides of the chessboard.

"You go first," he said, and he spun the board 180 degrees so the white pieces sat in front of her.

She half-scowled, half-smirked at him. "Oh, you sneaky little bitch," she said with a hint of a laugh, "I bet you already have up to a 'Plan Z' in your rotten little head, don't you?"

"Why don't you make a move and you can find out?" he teased.

She clenched her teeth behind her pink-stained lips, built an impromptu plot in her mind, and executed it, moving a pawn to G-3, thus beginning the game.

"Interesting move," Hayato said, a doubtful expression on his face. Then he mirrored her move, bringing one of his pawns to B-5. She squinted accusingly at him.

Within minutes, most of the army on both sides had been scattered, and before Tsuna knew it, Bianchi's queen cornered Hayato's rook.

"I take no pleasure in this," she said, in Italian.

"_Bugiarda_," he growled at her. She chuckled, taking much pride in knocking his piece right off the board.

Tsuna watched them closely, and by a few more minutes into the game, Hayato had lost nearly a third of his pieces, which made Bianchi pretty happy, until he took her queen away. He didn't lose any pieces after that. The time taken between each move grew little by little. As the number of white pieces decreased, so did the number of safe options. But Bianchi was obstinate. She made many gutsy moves on the off chance that Hayato wouldn't notice them.

"Ah, it's just like the old days," Hayato said, "…_Alandra_."

"Yes, except this time, I'm going to wi—" Her eyes went a little wider. "Oh, did you really just go there?" Her voice elevated.

He shrugged. "Yes, Alandra, I did." He crossed his arms.

She pointed a finger at him, fire in her eyes. "Look here, you little – you. Don't think you're going to throw me off just by calling me by my real name," she said.

"Alandra. Bianchi. Fontanegra," he said. He really sounded like a little kid.

Tsuna glanced back and forth between the two of them. "Wait, Bianchi, that's your real name?" he asked.

Bianchi nodded. "Yes, it is, and frankly it sounds weird coming from Hayato's voice." She crossed her arms. "I bet you can't say Tsuna's real name. It must be physically impossible for you after all this time."

"Sure, I can," he said, shrugging. "Tsunayoshi Sawada."

Tsuna jumped in shock in his chair. "_Whoa_." His eyes went wide at Hayato, who looked at him questioningly, as if he didn't understand why it was such a big deal.

"S-say it again," Tsuna breathed.

"Tsunayoshi Sawada." His name, in that raspy and low voice, in that rich and melodious Italian accent… He never thought it would be possible. Hayato had uttered it so simply – that had caught him off guard the most.

"You know…" Tsuna ventured, "Ah, I always wondered if it would be better if you called me by my real name, but… Bianchi's kind of right. It does sound different than I would have expected in your voice. I think I like 'Tenth' better after all."

Hayato chuckled. "It's not a problem, Tenth," he said. "Once you're used to something, it's hard to change."

"A wise deduction," Bianchi said, sliding her king forward one space as if she had just discovered some miracle formula. "_Marcello Hayato Luciano Bianchi-Fontanegra il cuarto_," she chanted. She pounded her fist on the table. He made an affronted face. "I can do it to you too," she said mockingly.

Tsuna shook his head, then pointed to his right-hand man. "Hayato… That's your full name?"

Hayato nodded rather dismissively. "I've always gone by Hayato, though, ever since I was born. So I much prefer it."

"Hayato's named after our father," Bianchi explained, "Who's named after his father, who's named after _his_ father. All the 'Marcello Fontanegra's in our family except for the first have gone by their second names to differentiate. Like, our dad's name is Marcello Patrizio, and he just goes by Patrizio. That's how it works with us." She stopped speaking when she noticed Hayato shaking his head ominously at her.

"Oh." Tsuna's audibility died down to nearly nothing as he watched the other boy make his next move. He slowly found his voice again. "What… What was it, again?"

"It's no matter, Tenth," Hayato said. "I'm not even known by that name anymore, anyway. You just need to know that I'm Hayato Gokudera, to me, to you, to the rest of the world now. Okay?" He had spoken gently, but Tsuna could sense the seriousness with which the other boy tried to establish his identity, and the animosity he held toward the name he used to bear.

Tsuna waited out the final moves of the game, his eyes glued on the board, though his mind was occupied with that name. _Marcello. His real first name is Marcello. _He glanced at Hayato's focused countenance. _He doesn't look like a Marcello. But I guess that's just because he's right, he introduced himself as Hayato to me and my brain won't accept any other name for him._ He recalled their first date, when Hayato had said, _"Gokudera isn't even my real last name." _He wondered where that surname could have come from.

Hayato pushed his pawn forward a single space, and he put laid his forearm on the edge of the table, a cocky smirk on his face. "Checkmate, dear sister," he said in a sickeningly sweet tone of voice.

She looked down at the board, bewildered to find that her white king was completely surrounded by Hayato's army of darkness. Her furiousness instantly showed on her face. She forced herself into an eerie calm after a few seconds. "I hate you," she muttered, glaring daggers at him, and she got up from her chair.

"The feeling's mutual," he joked as she walked away. He faced his boyfriend with an enthusiastic (yet somehow apprehensive) expression, which Tsuna met with a big smile, and the two of them high-fived. Hayato brought each of his pieces back to their starting tiles, then the white pieces, to start another game. Suddenly, he became quite paler than usual, his face contorted in pain, and he dropped the pieces in his quivering hand.

**LXXVI. Grunt child. **

"Um, Tenth?" He pushed his voice to steadiness despite the shaking.

At first Tsuna didn't look up from counting his pawns. "Yeah?" he said. A frigid pause hit the air, one that inexplicably made Tsuna's heart stop for a second.

He heard Hayato mutter "e-excuse me," and he was halfway across the room by the time Tsuna looked up.

0o.o0o.o0

His eyes closed and everything _rushed_ –

The pressure in his head and burning in his chest and tumult in his stomach,

The image of his father's face – during that one time – one of his worst memories – the one experience that changed the course of his life – whether that change was for better or worse was still debatable – but things had never been the same since then.

He squeezed the sides of the toilet hard. He felt the entirety of his insides trying to escape. The blood, the bile, the stomach acid, the tar all left him. He had been emptied in the most painful way.

A violent shudder moved through him, rendering him motionless for a moment, his face and thin hair over the toilet bowl. His rough panting echoed against the porcelain.

With great difficulty he pushed himself onto his feet. The tiny bathroom spun quickly around him – he grabbed the wall for balance, taking in a sharp gasp. He let the toilet lid down as gently as he could, then flushed.

He felt filthy, weak. He turned both sides of the sink faucet on full-blast and scrubbed his hands harshly, not realizing that he hadn't stopped doing so until about three or four minutes later, and that he had gotten his bandages soaked. He had torn his glasses off his face just seconds before vomiting so that they wouldn't fall in, and now he put them back on and leveled them.

His reflection in the mirror emerged from the haze in his eyes. The large black sweatshirt he wore covered all sins. He wiped his lips lightly with his sleeve, made sure the scars on his arms were hidden, raked his fingers through his hair once.

Lastly he stared himself straight in the face and smiled. It was a shaking, strained, weak smile that didn't reach anywhere near his eyes. It could have been painted onto his face. He knew that the smile was hollow, but he could probably fool anyone who looked at him. That was simply good enough.

Alandra stood in wait for him outside the bathroom, her arms crossed against her chest, the light of the suspended motion on the television screen glaring on her glasses, the small of her back pressed to the wall. She had the eyes of a wall-fly, the kind of scrutinizing eyes that followed their subject and delved into the deepest parts of their being until just the right moment to strike. They were distrustful eyes – sweet on the surface, passionate or even tired – but eyes of suspicion at their cores. At least, that was how Hayato had always viewed them. Perhaps they were the major factor in his weakness to her. He detected their sharp regard the second he opened that door.

Trying to save as much face as he still could, he scowled, furrowing his eyebrows so that a little wrinkle formed near the center of his forehead. "What do you want?" he said.

"You know, Hayato," she said, her body unmoving but her eyes locked on him, "When I was about fifteen, I somehow got the notion in my head that I had to be really skinny to be beautiful. So I started making myself throw up after every meal." Her eyes narrowed. "It was awful. Then I started dating Romeo Rapallino, and he gave me the confidence to pull through my bulimia. We broke up eventually, but he did still impact my life."

He opened his mouth to say something, but lost or retracted the thought. A small pause came over them while he tried to articulate the best possible response – even though something told him that Bianchi knew everything anyway. His features softened.

"I'm not doing it on purpose," he admitted quietly.

"I didn't think you were," she said.

"Then why are you bringing that up?" he asked, daring to move closer.

"Just to give you something to think about," she said. She pushed herself off the wall to stand normally and dropped her arms to her sides, now facing him directly. "I know that we swore to a mutual pact of silence about our years between the Castle and Namimori, but that doesn't mean that you can't talk to me about anything that's bothering you."

She hated looking her brother in the face. She really did – just as much as he hated looking in hers. It reminded her of everything she hated about herself and what she had and had not done.

Yet she came closer to it, bringing her own head toward it, the tip of her nose just grazing his shoulder (_good God, had he always been at this height? What was this height anyway? She had always just pictured him as perpetually four feet tall_). She cautioned to wrap her arms around him, hovering at his sweatshirt until they came all the way around and landed at his back. She pressed her body lightly against his. He was so fragile still, so delicate, and alarmingly slender. He stood completely still, neither accepting nor rejecting the embrace, but she could feel the subtle rise and fall of his chest from deep underneath his layers and layers of clothing, she could feel him trembling.

"Sis," he whispered, though she couldn't quite read his intent.

She took in a yearning, lingering breath and held it in for as long as she could. For a moment all she could think was, _I could have protected this. I could have protected you. _

Bianchi gave him one last squeeze and let go. He glanced at her with some unreadable expression, white lashes flickering around his tired eyes, and left the den. She smiled knowingly at the back of his head on his way out.

**LXXVII. Male giraffes actually mate more with other males than with females. **

Nana shoved her foot into the slipper with great force and gravitated toward the sound of television at the back of the house. At the very sharp angle she could make out the glow of the screen – filled with warm colors – and the music score of Disney's _The Lion King_. She furrowed her eyebrows, puzzled, when she turned to see her son and his boyfriend on the couch, entranced by the movie to some degree. "Hey, Mom," Tsuna called blankly. She felt Natsu's little body rub against her ankle in greeting.

It appeared the two boys had gotten quite cozy with each other: not a centimeter of space existed between them as Hayato had his arm around the shoulders of his boss, who leaned into him. They both had unmoving, shyly pleased, and most likely unintentional smiles on their faces. An opened package of Oreo cookies sat on the cushion beside Tsuna, and every few minutes, in the manner of an outdated factory, he would remove one cookie, twist it apart, give the clean wafer to Hayato who nibbled on it little by little until all at once it would disappear, carefully peel the sugary white filling off the other half, hand that other chocolate wafer to Hayato, eat the filling by itself, and repeat, all without taking his eyes off the TV or moving anything but his arms. Nana watched them carry out this process a few times in silence.

"So, is this all you did while I was gone?" she finally asked, bending down to pick up the miniature lion. Natsu laid his paws over her shoulder and rubbed his mane against her neck. His tail swayed weakly back and forth as he began to purr. She scratched his fur with her long, freshly manicured nails.

Hayato didn't stir a bit, but Tsuna turned his head toward his mother, eyes suddenly attentive. "I'm sorry?"

"Did you two just sit here watching kids'-movies and eating Oreos while I was gone?" she repeated.

"_The Lion King _is a _classic_, Mom. It's not just some 'kids' movie,'" Tsuna said fairly indignantly. He gave her a quick, playful grin. His answer sufficed by her standards. She glanced disdainfully at the Oreo package.

"You know you two are going to get fat sitting there just eating all those things," she said.

"It's not a problem, Maman," Hayato piped up. He craned his neck toward her now, too. His smile had turned more mischievous. "I did the math."

"Oh, really?" Maman said. Tsuna glanced up at his boyfriend's face at an awkward angle.

Hayato explained: "Oreos are seventy calories each. That's forty in the crème and fifteen for each chocolate part. The Tenth likes the crème and I like the chocolate, so that's all we've ingested, respectively. We've eaten a total of eighteen so far. That's five-hundred forty calories for me and seven-hundred twenty for your son. Meanwhile, kissing burns up to two calories a minute, so…" He trailed off and tensed up when Nana gave him a _look_. "…we could always do a nice, supervised jog around town later." He averted her gaze right away and faced the television screen again. "Just…yeah," he mumbled, now officially feeling awkward.

Tsuna burst into laughter at his boyfriend just as Simba cornered Scar on the cliffside. Nana rolled her eyes and shook her head – she couldn't help but smile – and she put Natsu down and went off to see Bianchi in the den.

She found the young woman on the couch there. As soon as Bianchi had heard Nana's footsteps approaching, she had paused the TV show. She smiled brightly at Tsuna's mother, said, "Hey, Maman," and glanced covertly at the digital clock on the far wall. 2:04 p.m. _Aw yeah, who called it? _

"Hi," she said. "How have the boys been?"

"They behaved the whole time," Bianchi answered.

"Really?" Nana asked with a hint of doubt.

Bianchi nodded. "Oh, yeah. I've been watching them really closely all day," she lied. She hit play on the DVR remote.

Nana stood in the doorway for a minute, observing the other woman, and then left for her bedroom.

**LXXVIII. Lessons in risk management. **

It started with a crazy idea, a suggestion, and they disappeared to Tsuna's room. Hayato shifted into many different positions until he finally found one that was comfortable enough, and as Tsuna brought out his notebook and flipped to a blank page, Hayato mockingly purred, "Draw me like one of your French girls," and Tsuna laughed, even though he didn't really get the reference.

Tsuna was still delighted, though. He had never drawn anyone who posed willingly for him before. He stared at his model for a long time, mapping out the image in his mind, trying to figure out how to properly capture the way his clothes wrinkled and his hair fell, the expression on his face and the way he held the light. Holding out his index finger, he traced all the lines in the air.

"Is everything alright, Tenth?" Hayato asked, trying not to move his lips too much.

"Yeah," Tsuna breathed. He was just nervous. He knew Hayato had to feel rather awkward sitting completely still there for several agonizing minutes while his boyfriend stared him down intently and immortalized every detail of his appearance. Quite honestly, Tsuna felt awkward too. Now his boyfriend knew what he did, liked it, and wanted more of it. This picture had to be perfect.

He lowered his pencil and made the first tentative mark on the paper. Once he lifted the pencil, he felt dissatisfied with what he had done, but he let it sit in his head a moment and decided to build upon it instead.

Minutes passed of the Tenth making strokes on the page, first the guidelines, then the rough outlines, then the contours, then the strands of his hair and the angle of the glint in his eyes.

Upon finishing, he stood, holding the notebook out at arm's-length from his face. He memorized his work, and then lowered the notebook to take one last glance at his subject, comparing the two images.

"È finito?" Hayato asked.

Tsuna grinned and flipped the notebook around to show him. "Uh… È-è finito," he replied in a horrendous Asian accent. Hayato stirred from his photogenic position, leaning toward the picture. He soaked in each mark.

"Is it… good?" Tsuna asked.

A wide, mostly horizontal smile spread over Hayato's face. "Tenth, it's perfect." He dismounted the bed. "Thank you very much."

Tsuna peered down at his work. "Really? You like it?"

"I couldn't have done it any better myself," he said. At that he put his arm around his boss' shoulders.

"You're too sweet," Tsuna said. He attempted to pivot so he could hug him, but felt the dull ache in his back turn sharp when he moved. He reached his arm behind him to rub his own back sorely.

Hayato backed away. "Tenth, are you okay?"

"Eh, I slept funny last night and sitting on that table these last few minutes – my back's hurt all day."

"I'm sorry," Hayato said, but Tsuna shook his head to the apology. Then he saw Hayato's face brighten at the strike of another wild idea, though this one he was a little embarrassed to say.

"Tenth, ah, I could give you a backrub if you want," he ventured.

Tsuna's face illuminated with a smile. "Oh, that sounds _awesome_," he said, bringing his arm back to its normal position.

A few minutes later, Nana was carrying a basket of hot, fresh laundry up the stairs, wondering at the back of her mind without much concern where the boys were. She looked down again, out of habit, at the smaller-sized clothes in the basket, before making a turn at the top of the stairs toward Lambo and Fuuta's room. She nearly opened the door when she heard something more interesting coming from inside her son's bedroom. This caused all alarms to go off in her brain.

"Hayato, this feels so good."

"I'm glad, Tenth."

"God, I have needed this for such a long time. I don't know why I've never asked you before."

"You know it's my pleasure."

"More over here – oh, that is… _ahh_… _yes_… I love you, Hayato."

"I love you too, Tenth. So much."

A great frown befell Nana's face. She slammed down the laundry basket and flung open the door.

"Tsunayoshi Sawada! What are you d—…"

Both boys eyed her innocently. Tsuna was lying on his stomach on the bed, but he sat up when he saw her. Hayato sat close beside him. They were both fully clothed and tidy, and as far as she could tell, their pupils were at the normal diameter and there were no bulges in their pants.

"Um…" Her eyes went very wide.

"Mom?" Tsuna said.

She bit her lip. "Erm, whatever you boys are doing, just… Here, I'll leave the door open. Leave the door open, please."

She slunk out of the room backwards, her eyes fixated on her son and his boyfriend the whole time. They stayed in her mind while she filed Lambo and Fuuta's clothes into their dresser drawers. She could clearly hear the boys break into laughter and speak:

"Wow! That was awkward." "Oh, my God, what did she think we were doing?" And more laughing.

She just shook her head.

**LXXIX. Crumbs in kilograms. **

Kazuo came to the two boys' table with two full glasses. The ice in both drinks shook around. He silently set the Coca-Cola down in front of the shorter of the two and gave the glass of water to the pale one. They both thanked him.

"Not a problem," Kazuo said. "And are you ready to order, or are you still looking?"

"It'll be a minute or two," the short one said politely. The waiter nodded and walked away.

Tsuna and Hayato faced one another; Hayato cracked a sweet smile, which Tsuna returned, and the boys reached for their drinks simultaneously.

"To a month –" he said, "—The month."

"The whole month," Tsuna said, and they raised their glasses to the center of the table to clink them together. Hayato took a small sip, but Tsuna stared into the glass. His smile grew. "The best month ever," he mumbled, and Hayato heard. He took a swig of the Coke and set it down.

Tsuna grabbed the menu, but he didn't open it. He found himself watching Hayato. The latter picked up the larger of the two spoons with his pianist fingers and dunked the curved end into his mostly-full glass of water. After stirring it around a little, he fished out an ice cube. He plucked it from the spoon and slipped it into his mouth, crunching it slowly, absentmindedly, as he studied the menu lying flat beside his plate and set the spoon back down on the tablecloth.

Tsuna blinked hard at the action, a scowl tugging at his face – he knew eating ice was something that little kids did in curiosity once or twice, but to see a mature teenager do it, and so casually, was a little odd. He vaguely recollected seeing Hayato do so a few times before, now that he was thinking about it.

"Do you always eat the ice cubes out of your drinks?" he asked.

Hayato paused, pondering his answer. His eyes lifted from the menu, but didn't quite meet the Tenth's. "Well, yeah," he said, after swallowing the tiny bits of ice and cold water, "I kind of crave it. I don't really know why."

He supposed he couldn't really judge, though. He himself probably had weird eating habits as well. A change in subject came after both boys figured out what food they wanted.

"So, how's your hand doing?" Tsuna asked.

Hayato jumped slightly at the comment and glanced at his bandaged right hand as if he had completely forgotten he had injured it. "Oh. Ah, fine, thanks," he said. "It's not that severe. Should heal up in about six weeks. I don't even have to keep it in a cast or anything. I just have to be careful about using it."

"Hm. Did a doctor look at it?" Tsuna said. He took a long sip of his soda.

Hayato cocked his head. "Erm… no," he said, his eyebrows furrowing slightly, his eyes straying.

"You probably should," Tsuna warned.

"Nah, I'll be fine." Hayato flipped the menu shut. "I don't much like going to the doctor, anyway." He took his spoon and got himself another ice cube, then settled more comfortably into his seat. The ice melted in his mouth. "Are you feeling better since yesterday, Tenth?" he asked.

The Vongola Tenth nodded profusely. "Definitely."

"Good. That's more important."

Smiling uneasily, Tsuna reached for, then retreated his hand from the sweating glass in front of him. He had yet to admit it out loud, but… as much as he appreciated Hayato's constant flattery, and eagerness to please him, and tendency to put him before everything else, he felt weird about it. He couldn't help but feel like he was using Hayato, even though he knew he wasn't – at least not on purpose. _Was "using" the right word? Maybe "driving," or. He didn't know. There was no good word for describing it. _Instead his arm went across the table and he laid his hand on Hayato's. Hayato diverted his eyes from the menu to his boss and smiled sweetly. The simple expression seemed to captivate the Tenth, even long after it faded.

**LXXX. Fright night (and "morning after.") **

Over there, rumpled in the corner of his bedroom. His heart fluttered. He remembered seeing Hayato wearing the black sweatshirt around the house, and he remembered seeing him at the restaurant without it. He had to have discarded it at some point. Tsuna supposed it had happened here.

He picked it up, examined it, and then brought it to his nose and took a deep inhale. _It smells like him_, he thought, a smile taking his face. He carried it in a loose ball to his bed, where he sat and sniffed it again. He missed him already – he probably wasn't even a block away yet.

Tsuna grabbed the sweatshirt by the shoulders and lifted it higher, letting it unfurl to its full size. He could picture Hayato wearing it this way.

The notebook lying on his table caught his eye for a second or two. He looked to the sweatshirt again, lowered it.

Today had been a great day. He achingly didn't want it to end.

_I can return this to him tomorrow at school_, he decided, and he turned the thing around, put his arms through the bottom, and pulled it over his head. Once he adjusted the sweatshirt, he found that it was absolutely _ginormous _on him – it looked really big on Hayato, too, he had noticed. But it held his mild, sweet, electric scent, and the inside was soft cotton. It felt like a hug, from him.

This would do.

_We try to throw all our worries off the end of the Earth. We forget that the Earth is round. _In the silence, the words cycled through his brain endlessly. _Whether you like it or not, you're still Marcello. But I don't care what your name is. _

Tsuna withdrew his arms into the excessively long sleeves and crashed backwards onto the bed. His eyes closed. Gradually, he fell asleep to Hayato's solemn voice in his head, repeating the words like the hopeless prayer of a young man who had seen too much.

0o.o0o.o0

She hit her knuckles against the open door. "Knock, knock," she said, the attempt at gentleness failing in her voice.

Enma drew the blanket tighter around him. Adelheid could see a new wrinkle form through the moderate darkness. "Go away," he said.

"Enma, you've been sulking in here all day," she sighed. "I'm concerned for you."

"I'm fine. Go away," he repeated.

She stepped inside, sat on the edge of the bed, and set a hand on his back. He shook her off.

Her long black hair had curled slightly from the wetness. It twisted almost down to her elbows. He could smell the mango from the shampoo, overwhelmingly.

Enma closed his eyes. His breathing paused, and he flung his torso backward onto the bed. Now she could see his face. He let the blanket loose around his head. Out of motherly instinct, Adelheid began to pet Enma's blood-colored hair. Enma barely opened his eyes, and through the blur of his eyelashes he could make out his right-hand woman's makeup-free face. He had to look away from her.

"I like men, Adelheid," he said almost soundlessly, as if the statement knocked the wind out of him.

"I know," she breathed. She held his head in both her hands and gently raked all her fingers through his hair.

"I have secretly for a long time," he said. She started to trace his hairline with her fingertips. After a long beat he said, "I'm scared."

"Why are you scared?" she cooed.

His eyes shut again. The movement of his chest was barely detectable from under the blanket; his breathing was slow, almost labored. "Why would I not be?" he said.

0o.o0o.o0

As he approached his destination street by street, he began to notice the crowds getting thinner, the sky growing blacker, the air becoming soupier. He was walking in front of a small sandwich shop when out of nowhere, vertigo hit him. Hayato veered off to the side and barely caught himself as he nearly collapsed against the brick wall. His legs wobbled, and all around him colors changed and objects multiplied.

He tilted his head downward when he began to cough, bringing his right hand to his mouth. Once he thought it was over, as his vision began to refocus, he pulled his hand away and dared to look at the red spattered on his bandages. He felt like he was going to throw up. His hand flew to his mouth again, only to cover a few more, deep coughs. He struggled to breathe.

A hand landed gently on his shoulder from behind. "Young man, are you okay?"

Hayato gathered himself and pivoted slightly to find a middle-aged woman with short black hair, laugh lines and small black high-heels standing right beside him.

"I'm okay," he choked out.

"A-are you sure? You look flushed."

He noticed the droop of her eyes then. She was truly concerned. He forced a smile onto his face. "Yes," he said in his most charming and convincing voice, "Thank you."

Her worried expression took on a strong sense of doubt, and she hesitated before taking her hand off his shoulder and walking away, but alas, she did eventually, and he continued walking down the street.

_Maybe I should take a break from that project tonight_, he thought. He felt weak all over, and woozy, and it had been a special day…

Over by the stop sign, a college student in a striped shirt was smoking a cigarette. It hadn't really crossed Hayato's mind today, but right now, frankly, he would killfor a smoke. _Yeah, I should probably just head home. _He made a few casual turns and was soon heading in the direction of his apartment.

Suddenly he realized that he was on _this _street. He hadn't treaded here since the night the dreams came back – this past Christmas, while he was walking the long way home around midnight, after a party, because he enjoyed the cold. The night when he was ruined. It had happened on this street, in the dark, where his protests could not be heard.

His pace slowed to practically a crawl. He crossed his arms over his stomach in anxiety, glancing about at the lack of people, and wondered if he should turn back and find a different way home. This road posed no direct danger to him at this moment. It was the memories. A cold sweat erupted from him, chills raced through his body.

Down the road he could see a darkened silhouette coming toward him. Hayato froze. His heart stopped briefly, and then started beating hard. He had to force himself to breathe.

He turned on his heels, trying his best to remain calm, and walked in the opposite direction, back to where he had made the wrong turn. When he looked back over his shoulder, he saw that the figure was still there, and fast approaching. He attempted to rationalize in his brain that _I'm just being paranoid, this person probably wants nothing to do with me, it's just this street, it's just this street_. But all the reassuring thoughts, whether correct or not, evacuated his mind completely when he looked back again to see the person getting ever closer. He realized he had two choices now: either continue to act casual, or run.

0o.o0o.o0

**Whelp, summer's coming very soon, so I expect to crank out these chapters at a fairly quicker rate. Hopefully I won't be wrong. **


	9. I love you, I'm going to blow up

**Well, I blew it – posting this summer, anyway. Sorry. **

**But thank you for all the reviews. Hopefully you won't be disappointed after this wait. **

**And a very happy birthday to my wonderful, amazing husbando~ **

**Chapter Nine: ****I love you, I'm going to blow up your school.**

**LXXXI. Closer and closer. **

Even after leaving the dreaded street to a road somewhat more populated, the figure was still coming after him. The distance between them was far enough to keep the pace fairly slow but short enough to raise alarms.

Hayato slipped his good hand into his pants pocket, feeling the lighter that had sunk to the bottom. He hadn't fought much with his classic dynamite lately, and the electric cigarettes at home had replaced the packs of KS-20-S Nazionalis he used to carry all the time. (He had tried to get into the far more widely available American brands, but just couldn't do it.) Really, the old lighter was a comfort item. Sometimes when the craving for nicotine hit him too hard he would find himself subconsciously playing with it.

He no longer cared about inconspicuousness in checking behind him for the follower. The person was directly under a streetlight at this second – Hayato should have been able to make out some of the person's features, but he saw only a shadowy, ambiguous humanoid. Now he was almost as confused as he was nervous.

As soon as he faced forward, he heard a familiar voice calling to him, "Hayato." He stopped, looked in the direction of the voice and saw someone he thought he would never see again.

"Hey." Shamal raised a hand to him briefly. The smile he forced brought out the wrinkles in his face. His hair was unusually neat, and his deep teal sport coat made a clean shape on the white stucco of the wall behind him. His expression seemed rather serious, his pronunciation crisp, his eyes alert, so he had to be sober.

Hayato peered side to side before putting his eyes on the doctor. "Hi," he said uncertainly.

Shamal moved his foot as though he intended to lessen the distance between them, but stopped and shuffled it back into place. "How have you been?" he asked. His fake smile grew wider.

Furrowing his eyebrows a little, Hayato lifted his left hand out of his pocket. He didn't say anything. After a moment, Shamal looked down and noticed the bandages.

"What happened to your hand?" he asked.

Hayato chewed over his response. "Broke it," he answered.

"Ah, that sucks." Shamal clicked his tongue. He held out a hand. "Mind if I take a look at it?"

"What would you do about it?" Hayato said, knowing the man's aversion to treating male patients.

Shamal shrugged. "Well, it wouldn't _hurt_ for me to see it," he reasoned. Hayato hesitated, drawing his right arm backward slightly, but eventually brought his hand to a hover over Shamal's. The doctor took hold of it as gently as he could and unwound the bandages with trained precision.

The hand in his was pale and it trembled, and the fingers were bent stiffly. He handled it carefully, giving it a 360-degree examination. "The break doesn't look too terribly bad," he said, his voice deep and quiet. "You did pretty well cleaning the wounds." He laid Hayato's hand on its back. He grabbed the end of one of his fingers. "Does this hurt?" he asked as he slowly tried to straighten it, but his question was answered when he noticed Hayato wincing.

He quickly wrapped the bandages around the hand and gave it back to Hayato. "I've trained you pretty well," he said, his smile turning real for a split second. But then he looked at Hayato's face. The corners of his lips dropped. He didn't get a good look at Hayato the last time he saw him. The boy looked thin – his face was gaunt, his clothes looked too large for him, his hair was longer but it looked sparser and brittle. His eyes had sunken deep into the dark circles around them; their expression grabbed Shamal's attention the hardest. He had never seen them look so terrified.

"Having another episode?" Shamal asked.

Hayato's shoulders sank and stiffened again. "What are you doing here?" he asked impatiently, ignoring the previous question.

Averting Hayato's tired, frightened eyes, Shamal shuffled his feet again. Then he shook his head. He refocused on Hayato. Hayato's posture straightened uncomfortably. Suddenly his eyes opened very widely and he threw his gaze down the street.

Shamal tensed but dismissed Hayato's offense, then looked where Hayato was looking. He brought his eyes back to Hayato when he saw that the latter had taken half a step closer to him. Hayato was facing him again.

"I think I'm being followed," Hayato said. "He's right over there, really close to us. I shouldn't be standing here with you this long."

Shamal shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, glancing down the road again.

No one was there.

From his spot on the sidewalk he looked into the windows of the buildings around them, leaned at different angles to peer into nearby alleyways, even gazed over the rooftops. There were no living souls around except for the two of them.

When he looked back, Hayato had walked away, already halfway down the street. The doctor took off running to catch up to him.

"If we shouldn't be here, then let's go back to the apartment," Shamal suggested. Hayato glanced up at him, the fear in his eyes even more evident now. Shamal just smiled at him as reassuringly as he could. "I have something I want to talk about anyway," he said.

Hayato looked back down. He took another peek over his shoulder and shrank slightly, but continued walking beside the man. The mysterious stalker was nowhere to be seen.

0o.o0o.o0

Sighing out a puff of vapor, Hayato could feel every muscle in his body relaxing.

"I have to ask again," Shamal said, "Are you feeling okay?"

Hayato didn't make a sound. His lips just quivered. He looked off to the side at the wall of books and stared at it through his glasses for a few minutes, vapor pouring off the end of his e-cig, before Shamal pushed himself away from the counter he was leaning against.

"I… I want to apologize for what happened between us," he started. Hayato turned his head quickly to face him. "I was so wrong. I don't even know where to begin."

"You're apologizing?" Hayato asked through his teeth.

Shamal nodded. "I didn't mean to start this whole big mess because of it. I mean, that's the first time we ever fought like that, and I have to say it scared me. I've been thinking about what happened, what I said, what you said, and… I had to come back and fix this." His eyes flashed to the feet of the coffee table before focusing back on the boy's face.

Hayato took a deep breath, his chest visibly rising from it, and plucked the e-cig from between his lips. Vapor left his mouth as he spoke: "This is really unlike you, Shamal."

"Hayato," he said – he came toward him and knelt to the floor, his brown eyes full of earnest sorrow, his hand tentatively placed on the sitting boy's knee.

"I realized. I have been terrible to you. A terrible uncle, a terrible guardian, a terrible roommate, a terrible role model, just terrible," Shamal said. "I could list a million ways I've done you wrong and not even scratch the surface." He felt a sickening coldness wash over him.

The pair of gray-green eyes remained locked on him for a full minute at least. The fear washed out of them, they speculated his intent with reserved criticism. Shamal had never felt this weak before, this exposed.

Then Hayato closed his eyes and let out a sound that, if Shamal didn't know better, might have sounded like a laugh.

"You know, begging forgiveness now won't make everything better," Hayato said.

"I'm serious, Hayato!" Shamal pleaded. "There are so many things I wish I could take back, almost everything I've done since the day you were born, all those things that you had to go through without me there to back you up – what's done is done now and I understand that, and that I've made the most egregious series of mistakes –"

He paused to take a breath and force his voice to slow down.

"But, God, Hayato, I'm sorry. You're my nephew, okay? You're the only family I've got left. You're like a son to me, and I don't… If I lost you, dear God, I would just die. Please forgive me. I don't give a shit that you're dating another boy. I still care about you more than I care about anyone else. I'll support you in anything. Everything." The grip he held on the boy's knee grew tighter. "I swear to you. I promise from now on I will always be there for you."

Hayato blinked slowly in thought and sympathy, a thin sheet of vapor floating about his head. He held the end of his electronic cigarette with his thumb and forefinger but hesitated before taking it out. His lips curled into a pained smile.

"I want to believe you," he whispered.

"You can," Shamal said hopefully.

His smile faded. He brought the e-cig up again, took a long, quiet drag, held the vapor in his mouth and throat, and let it seep out slowly.

**LXXXII. ****"'And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.'" – F. Scott Fitzgerald. **

He stood in the uneasy artificial darkness of the apartment, his posture a low hunch as he observed his sleeping nephew. Any light left here at all seemed to attach to the boy. Goosebumps rose on Shamal's arms at the sight of it and the chill of the air, and he despaired quietly in the fact that this poor boy looked more and more like his mother every time he laid eyes on him. The gossamer silver hair, the abysmal gray-green eyes, the graceful and expressive face, the smooth and pale skin that felt cold to the touch – yes, Hayato was an exact and unfortunate copy of the woman. Shamal dutifully watched his chest rise and fall to take in shallow breaths, and wondered what the boy's brilliant mind could have been enduring in his current state of unconsciousness.

Lavina Gokudera was a strong woman – more emotionally than physically, as the same disease that had claimed her father's life slowly destroyed her body over the years. It had been obvious that she was always in pain. But she never cried or complained, never pitied herself or accepted pity from anyone else, never let her state cloud her proactivity or her optimism.

She was brilliant. She came up with the craziest of ideas, everything from philosophies on the arts to downright harebrained schemes. She had a naturally insatiable curiosity. She devoured every book she found and excelled in all intellectual pursuits.

She always stayed true to her convictions. Whether she was right or wrong, she never lost an argument. She negotiated masterfully. And she was stubborn as all get-out – if you didn't agree with her method, motive or mentality, then you'd be best off just to leave. She never lied, beat around the bush, or allowed an opposition to go freely.

Yet she expressed the bravest of humility in her everyday life. She never assumed or judged. Rather, she went about her days stoically, with her head held high. The pain did enough to ground her, and made her more compassionate in her misery, though she was sure to keep it from entering the forefront of her mind.

All in all, she was good at everything. She _was_ everything. Giuliano Shamal had been Lavina Gokudera's partner in crime since he was only six and she seven, when his father married her mother. She was there to lead him during those long, lonely nights and intrigue him in times of boredom and depression; he saw her through countless visits to the hospital and never teased her when she couldn't do something by herself because of her ailments. No woman would ever matter more to Giuliano ("Giules", she called him) than Lavina. He loved her, revered her, and in her last few years, took care of her. She was his best friend. She had defined his life.

So it was no wonder that, after she died, he buckled, and turned to alcohol, gambling and cheap ladies of the night.

Lavina's son would be the death of him, he had figured. After all, the only time Giuliano had seen Lavina cry was when she had found out she was pregnant. She couldn't believe such a fate had befallen her after only her first time, even with protection. She wept for the unborn child for hours. It was awful. He had never seen her so fragile, so distraught. This time, there was no plan, only regret. She felt utterly hopeless. She feared of what would become of her child and hated herself for bringing the beautiful and delicate Hayato into such a senseless, dangerous, ugly world. She prayed every day, before and after he was born, that Hayato could find a way to live happily.

She never blamed Patrizio, Hayato's father, though. Never. She adored him, and he loved her. He was the only man she had ever let herself love that way. But in the end, two very big things kept them from being together: her illness and his wife. He had already made a family with a woman whose heart had collapsed in on itself and become a merciless black hole a long time ago – they had a lovely little daughter and rather overbearing extended family members – and as much as Lavina wanted to keep Patrizio in her life, she didn't have the heart to separate him from the other important people who needed him. Lavina knew that even if he did leave his wife and run away from it all with her, it would end only badly. She knew she was dying; she didn't want to subject him to that after going through so much already. It was hard enough for Lavina to give the child up to the father, even knowing that it was the best option at the time.

Little Hayato had not only inherited her appearance, but also her personality, even her mannerisms and little habits. Shamal detected the similarities from the very start. He had the same fiery spirit, determination, desire to be the best he could be, the same devotion to others and the same infallible mind and quiet courage in the face of constant pain. Just like her, he had that unquenchable thirst for knowledge – embracive of the arts as well, of literature and music –, and that indignant aversion to personal questions.

Giuliano swore to the dying Lavina that he would go on to live a good life, that he would not resent Patrizio, and most of all that he would make sure Hayato grew up well.

He couldn't exactly pinpoint where it all went wrong – things had never been perfect, but he recognized that sometime before, he could live without this chip on his shoulder. No, the collective failure of many souls had culminated over a period of time, an epic drama, a war on many fronts that had yet to complete. In the manner of a war, there were no winners – only losers. By the time care and custody of Hayato had passed to his uncle Giuliano, everything had already gone to hell, and it still went only downhill from there. The undeniable facts were, Lavina was dead, and so were both of her parents and both of Giuliano's parents as well, and Giuliano drank and whored and sinned, and Patrizio was still bound miserably by a pair of gold rings to that witch, and Hayato, the helpless victim of this giant mess, slept lightly on a cheap couch night after night, his mind the host for fantastic recollections of a tortured past.

They had all fought alone, against everything, but the outcome was inevitable from the start. They had all failed. The struggle would only end once every last one of them was dead, and as it stood, a painless death would be impossible for anyone involved.

**LXXXIII. Rubber tree's shaken leaves. **

Nana entered the room quietly, paused half a second at the sight of the opened notebook on the low table, and then stood beside her son's bed. She tapped his shoulder. "Tsu-kun, time to get up," she said.

Only very rarely did Tsuna receive such humane awakenings. Usually he was rousted by a blaring alarm, Reborn kicking him in the face, or Lambo screaming childishly as he jumped on his bed. When he opened his eyes to his mother, he began to peel the sheets off of his body.

"'Morning, Mom," he said groggily.

She smiled, though the expression only laid on the surface. Her temper rose when she saw that her son had worn his boyfriend's shirt to bed.

"Since you were absent yesterday, I figured you should try to be on time today," she said.

He nodded, rubbing one eye. "Good idea." Tsuna swung his legs over the side of the bed and started to push himself up with his palms, but stopped and stretched dramatically before he could stand.

"Tsuna-kun," she said darkly. He caught her voice and sat straight. Her soft smile had disappeared.

"I wanted to say… You made me really nervous yesterday," she said.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Nana's shoulders drooped. "You here alone for hours with Hayato-kun… I don't know. I get the feeling that Bianchi wasn't completely on task."

Tsuna bit his bottom lip. He knew to appear guilty, but she could see his confusion too.

"It's not that there are many consequences of you and Hayato-kun doing _things_ like that. It's just that, well, you're my baby boy. I don't like to think about you losing your innocence."

"Oh," he said. He looked sadly to the wall behind her for a brief time, choosing the way to word his response. "You…" He stood. "You don't have to worry about that."

"Why do you say that?" she asked, detecting the hint of sadness to her son's face and voice. She took half a step backward.

Tsuna shook his head. "Hayato and I discussed that before, actually. We decided to stay abstinent."

_Hayato had stuttered a few times, but each time after he opened his mouth he looked down at his lap and stroked the coffee cup insecurely with his thumb. A while passed of him wanting to say something and then abruptly cutting himself off before Tsuna asked him what he wanted to tell him. _

_He hesitated a minute; he bit his bottom lip as his eyes moved around the diner, to the couple in the booth, to the loud little boys near the center of the room. "I know that we probably will not get to this point anytime in the near future, and it is a little awkward to talk about, but I just want to say this now so I will not have to do so later," he said slowly. He put the lid of the cup to his lips, even though the cup was empty. _

"_What is it?" Tsuna asked. _

_Hayato still would not look at him. "It's hard for me to talk about, but…" His hand clenched under the table. He forced himself to meet the Tenth's eyes dead-on. "Sex terrifies me," he said. _

_The weakness and the desperation in his voice formed an invisible arm that thrust right through Tsuna's heart. _

"_I mean," he quieted, averting his eyes again, "Most guys my age, they, you know, like to sleep around and watch porn and stuff. I don't do any of that. Even the thought of it, I just…." He set his elbow on the edge of the table and started to rub his forehead with his hand, covering part of his face. "I'm sorry, Tenth. If you really want to do that sort of thing at any point, I'd oblige. I just wanted to tell you I'm not that into it." _

"_Okay," Tsuna said. _

_Hayato raised his head to him and lowered his hand, his face flushed. _

"_We don't have to if you don't want to. I probably wouldn't ask for that anyway, at least not for a long time." _

_For reassurance, Tsuna flashed his new boyfriend an understanding smile. Hayato struggled to smile back, quietly thanking and then apologizing to him – _

"_It's not a problem," Tsuna said. "Your body is not what I fell in love with you for." _

He had meant it when he told Hayato he would wait, though he would discover that waiting got more and more difficult every time he saw him. The urge was still easy to contain, but he could tell it was growing bigger and more threatening. Tsuna knew he would honor the agreement until Hayato felt comfortable. He just didn't know how hard it would get.

Especially since, alone in the quiet darkness of last night, he had had a little _self-pleasuring fun_. It was the first time he had done it in a while, and he thought of Hayato the whole time. As he stood from his bed this morning, he made sure to inconspicuously hide the faint wet spot on his sheets, and keep the oversized sweatshirt hanging somewhat over his pants.

"Oh, really?" she said. She clasped her hands together, smiling. "You're so responsible!"

He nodded shyly. "Yeah," he said, and a blush came to his face.

"Alright. Good. I guess this means I don't have to worry much about you, then." She took a step forward to ruffle her son's hair and walked out of the room.

_She shouldn't have a reason to distrust me anyway,_ Tsuna thought. But as he considered it more, the notion came across that maybe Hayato's experience with molestation influenced his fear of sexual acts. He turned around to pull the blankets up to his pillows.

Then he grabbed the collar of the sweatshirt and held it over his nose, taking a deep inhale. Hayato's scent still hadn't gone away. He sighed as the collar fell back into place.

**LXXXIV. I will run with your scissors because you said not to. **

"_Is it true?" He glared hard at his father through windswept bangs and dim light. _

_His father jumped to his feet. The other men at the table stared judgingly at the young boy. It took a few seconds for Patrizio to identify the look on his son's face and then collect himself. _

"_Hayato, I'm in the middle of a meeting right now," he said in as firm a voice as possible. "Leave and I will talk to you when this is over." _

_Planting his feet on the ground, the boy closed and latched the thick wooden door behind him. His eyes stayed on his father the whole time. "Don't stall, _Padre_," he growled. "Am I really not Brigida's son?" _

_The strangers in the room couldn't contain their gasps; the tension in the air was stifling. _

_For a second – a tiny fraction of a second, a flash, an instant – Hayato saw the apology in Patrizio's eyes, the widening and wet shimmer before a blink. It said everything he couldn't say aloud. And it still was not enough. _

_Patrizio stiffened again. "Hayato, go to your room." The underlying waver in his tone was barely detectable. _

_Hayato felt a pair of giant arms grab him around the waist and lift him off the ground. The door opened and he started to move backward. One of his father's guards had picked him up and was carrying him out. _

_He thrashed about, hitting the man's broad shoulder with his fist. "Let me go!" he shouted. "Let me go!" _

_Patrizio's expression became apologetic again before the door shut quietly upon it. _

**LXXXV. What would I do without you? **

The breath Hayato drew pained him, as though he had just been stabbed in the chest by a frozen sword. He whimpered. All energy seemed to drain from his limbs.

Shamal turned his head, lifting his hands from the keyboard of his well-worn laptop. His eyes and ears remained alert on the back of the couch, but he did not make another move until he was sure he heard his nephew again.

"Hayato?" He pushed himself out of the chair by placing a hand on the card table he had just unfolded this morning. "Y'awake?"

The teen let out a moan. Shamal padded over to him immediately.

"Good morning, Kid," he said enthusiastically. He glanced at the clock – 7:04. "I know it's a school morning, so it's a little late, but we could go for donuts or something."

Hayato curled up slightly. His hands clutched the sides of his head to confine the pain roaring inside.

Shamal bent over at the waist and took a closer look at his nephew. Sweat covered his sallow skin. He grazed the back of his hand over the boy's forehead. He felt cool to the touch. He was trembling.

Instantly his voice grew quiet. "What's wrong?" he asked, even though he was certain it had to be at least a headache. He put a hand on the blanket, over the boy's shoulder.

Hayato sighed, whimpered and groaned all at once. Shamal could hear him whisper into his pillow, "The light smells too loud," or something along those lines.

Shamal stood and grimaced, crossing his arms low over his chest. His nephew had had a problem with migraine headaches for more than half his life. Usually he didn't complain about them, so Shamal would forget about it. If the pain bothered him this badly, however, something had to be abnormal.

Without another word, Shamal padded over to the door, slipped his feet into his shoes, grabbed his wallet and left the apartment.

0o.o0o.o0

When he came back, he found Hayato still lying on the couch, buried under the covers. Shamal shut the door as soundlessly as he could, immediately taking off his shoes. He went to the kitchenette, opened the cupboard door, grabbed the foremost glass and filled it with cold tapwater. After fished a bottle of pills out of the paper bag in his hand and set the glass on the coffee table, he opened the bottle and removed one pill, setting it beside the glass. He stood on the other side of the coffee table and stared fretfully at Hayato until he saw the boy peek his head over the blanket.

"This medication is the best for pain," Shamal said. "You take just one and you won't feel a thing for four hours or so."

A pale arm emerged from underneath the blanket and hovered blindly over the coffee table. "I thought you didn't treat male patients," Hayato said.

"It's not a treatment. It just helps the pain," Shamal replied with a frown. He knelt to the floor and reached across to pick up the pill and place it in Hayato's palm. "Sit up," he instructed. Hayato did, and put the pill in his mouth. Right away Shamal handed him the water.

Hayato had his eyes closed the whole time. Once he swallowed, he put the glass back on the table and clutched the side of his head. Pain had contorted his face. His whole body quivered uncontrollably.

"I taking hate all these pills," Hayato said, his voice barely audible.

Shamal laid his forearms one over the other on the table, his head bowed. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

Sighing, Hayato rubbed his scalp a few times before opening his eyes to the dull, blurry, burning light. He identified the vague spot of brown across the coffee table as his uncle before he closed his eyes again. "Fuck," he said quietly, "It hurts to even breathe."

Shamal grabbed the bottle, stuffed it back into the bag, and got up to lay the bag on the countertop. When he turned around, Hayato had already lied back down, his eyes shut to the ceiling. The color of his skin against the blue couch made him look even sicklier. His breathing was shallow.

"It should take effect in no time, and you'll feel fine," he said. He grabbed the trashcan without looking into it and rinsed it well in the shower, setting it back down in the same place once it was clean. He took a few cautious steps to the front door. "I have to go out today. Something kind of important. I won't be gone too terribly long, though."

Hayato's head turned, and his arm stretched out toward his uncle, his eyes opening slightly. "Please don't leave me alone yet," he begged.

Shamal paused, now in front of the door, with one foot halfway in a show. He peered over his shoulder. And he swore for a moment that he could see his own stepsister lying there, trying her best to hide the pain in her face, just as her son was doing now.

Without another word, he stepped back and sat on the floor at the other side of the coffee table.

0o.o0o.o0

A little over half an hour later, Hayato slowly sat up, bringing Shamal to attention.

"Are you feeling better now?" Shamal asked.

Hayato nodded. "It's kind of unsettling," he added hesitantly. "I can barely remember the last time my head didn't hurt."

Shamal sat in observation while the boy took a minute to adjust to the numbness brought on by the medication. This stuff really did its job – he felt as though he was flying ten feet off the ground. Hayato groped for his glasses and laid them on his face. He blinked at the lenses a few times before easing off the couch and onto his feet.

"I'm going to put in contacts and take a shower," he said, walking away unsteadily.

"Really?" Shamal stood. "You sure?"

Hayato reached the bathroom door and laid a hand on the doorknob. "Since I'm feeling better, I do _not _want to be cooped up in this apartment all day."

"I'll wait for you then, and we can go out. I can't bring you inside where I'm going, though," Shamal said. Hayato looked over his shoulder to give his uncle a fleeting, affirmative smirk before disappearing into the bathroom.

0o.o0o.o0

Hayato opened the door and took a few slow steps out, trying his best to pull his hair back with one hand while holding a band between his teeth.

Shamal, sitting at the card table again, closed his laptop and looked back at the boy. "How was it? You still feel okay?" he asked.

"It would have been a decent shower if you hadn't used up all the warm water already," Hayato said. Shamal laughed. He glanced over to the kitchenette counter.

"You should probably take those pills with you, you know, in case we're gone long enough for it to wear off," Shamal suggested.

Hayato managed to fit most of his hair into the band, twisting the thing around several times, on his way to the paper bag on the counter. He dug the orange bottle out and stared at the label for a good minute.

"What?" Shamal had gotten up from the chair now and was heading toward his nephew.

"I heard some people use these to make narcotics," he mumbled. He held the bottle above his head and squinted at the print. Then he faced his uncle. "I thought you didn't treat male patients."

Shamal leaned over and set his elbows on the counter beside the boy. "This isn't a treatment – it just helps the pain," he explained.

"Mm. Okay." Hayato pocketed the pill bottle, then pulled the cord out of his BlackBerry and shoved it in another pocket. He grabbed his electronic cigarette from the charging station in the corner, immediately turning it on and sticking it in his mouth. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah," Shamal said. He ducked away to the front door where his brown leather jacket hung on a hook on the wall, and he forced his feet into a pair of shoes. Hayato had taken a pair of shows in hand and sat on the couch with them – he had to adjust the laces.

Shamal said with the tiniest of chuckles, "At least that guy didn't follow us home last night." He straightened the collar of his jacket.

Everything in the apartment froze. Hayato looked up from his shoelaces with his eyes frantic. "What guy?"

"You know, there was someone following us last night. You said so," he said.

A small, poignant pause. "I don't remember that at all," Hayato said.

Shamal faced him when he recognized the hint of genuine panic in his nephew's voice. He didn't know whether the look of fear came from the possibility of a stalker or the fact that he didn't remember, or maybe thinking that Shamal was going crazy. Hayato shook his head. Their eyes stayed locked on one another's.

"You… seriously do not remember?"

Shaking his head again, Hayato glanced at the window behind him and all around the room. "Should I be concerned?" he said slowly.

Shamal bit his lip.

"No. I'm just joking. It was nothing." He faked a smile at the boy, spun and unlocked the front door. "It was nothing," he repeated under his breath.

**LXXXVI. Of all people, of all days. **

The entire walk to the center of town, Hayato mentally kept count of the number of women they passed. Shamal never acknowledged any of them. But he did ask probing questions about Hayato and his boyfriend.

"So you're really in love with him," Shamal said. He smiled down at him.

"I'm certain I am. I've never felt this way about anyone else."

Shamal nodded. "Good for you," he said. "I wish I knew what that felt like." Before his nephew could reply, the two of them stopped underneath a pavilion.

"We have to part ways now," Shamal said. "There's a store not too far away from here that sells all different sorts of stuffed animals, if you want to hang out there until I'm done."

Hayato frowned at him, squinting. "Do I look like I'm five years old to you?"

"Sometimes," Shamal laughed. His hands went in the side pockets of his pants.

Lavina's son looked down the road. "Actually, I do have something to do while you're in there," he said. He met eyes with his uncle. "Mind if I just meet you back at the apartment later?"

"Ah, sure. Have fun, I guess." They shot small smiles at each other as goodbyes and Hayato started down the sidewalk in the direction he had looked before. "Don't forget, if your head starts to hurt again, take another one of those pills!" Shamal shouted after him.

_What a perfect day to work on my music shop project_, Hayato thought. He tucked some hair behind his ear and smiled. About a block from where Shamal had left him, he saw a city bus pull up to a station. That old building was more than a reasonable walking distance away from here, anyway.

0o.o0o.o0

Tsuna laid the tip of his pencil on the paper, kept it there as the teacher's words faded out of his mind, and then picked it up. Even if there was supposed to be a math test tomorrow, he couldn't bring himself to pay attention. He had to get the image from his mind to his notebook.

_Hayato likes my art, and I really enjoy it_, he thought with a smile. _I should keep doing it_. He skimmed the rows of desks with his eyes. Kyoko was scrawling notes in the margins of her paper with a gel pen, Yamamoto not-so-discreetly reading a sports magazine that he held underneath the desk, Hana on her cell phone, Chrome closing her eye and rubbing her temples, P. building some sort of sculpture with the mints from the jar on the teacher's file cabinet. But no Hayato. No Enma either.

He did not know which of the two missing boys he was more worried about. He wanted to see Hayato, of course, and he had been absent from school many times recently. Yet Tsuna had not spoken to Enma since the Rejection. Enma was one of his closest friends. Apparently Enma had not felt well for the past few days and didn't come to school at all yesterday – something for which Tsuna felt responsible.

The sketch of Natsu sleeping on the black cloak he could become, now composed of crisp contour lines but little detail, disappeared when Tsuna flipped to the next clean page. He would finish it after school. And he considered quite heavily tearing the picture out and giving it to Enma next time he would see him.

0o.o0o.o0

Enma stood from the metal bench when he heard the bus start to brake. He clutched his sides, his eyes fixed forward with solemn determination, and the door opened to him.

He fished a few yen out of his pocket without pause and dropped them in the fare box before turning down the aisle to find a seat. His gaze seemed focused on the back of the bus, though his mind was on something else entirely. He almost didn't hear a fairly familiar voice call his name: "Kozato?"

He faced the source of the voice and stared vacantly for a few seconds before his full consciousness came back to him. In one of the middle rows, on the right side, there was the Vongola Storm Guardian.

The guy looked a little different from usual – the drawn expression on his face and dark circles under his eyes were in no way hidden. His hair had been halfheartedly gathered into a loose ponytail, his clothes were plain, he just appeared to be very tired. "What are you doing out of school?" he asked.

Enma stopped walking. "What are _you _doing out of school?" he retorted.

Gokudera cocked his head. "Eh, you have a point," he said. His voice lacked its usual emotion and vitality. He pushed himself into the corner. "You can sit next to me, if you want. There's room."

Every other seat on the bus already had either two people or a stranger with a large bag, and Enma could feel the bus driver's budding impatience, so he took the other boy up on his offer, sitting at the edge of the seat without making noise or eye contact.

Once the bus started moving again, Enma got back to thinking. He knotted the hem of his shirt around his finger. His focus remained straight-ahead and modest.

Gokudera didn't say anything to him at first, for which Enma was thankful. Mostly he glanced between Enma and the window, his thin gray hair flowing with the slightest movements of his head. After a while he remained fixated on Enma's profile, regarding it with an air of quiet sadness. Enma just started to realize this when Gokudera spoke up.

"You seem nervous," he said.

Enma almost faced him, but opted for a very stiff shrug instead.

Leaning further back into the corner, Gokudera slid his elbow over the back of the seat. "Where are you going, anyway?"

"It's been some morning," Enma said under his breath, "Some weekend. I just wanted to get out of the house. Clear my head."

Gokudera nodded. Something pulled his attention to the window – passing by the older district of Namimori that all the businesses left years ago – and held it indefinitely away from their conversation. Enma looked him over again: he wore a dark green jacket, which was odd for the warm weather that had come into the area lately, and the only jewelry he had was a ring around his left little finger.

He squinted at the ring a minute. It was a delicate thing, formed by silver and gold bands coiling around one another and meeting in the middle to hold a round-cut diamond. That had to be a women's ring. He wondered where Gokudera got it, what purpose it served.

It struck Enma how little he knew about Gokudera. He was Tsuna's right-hand man, Storm Guardian, best friend, and boyfriend; he had an Italian accent and high grades in school, and Shitopi-chan really liked him. But that was just as far as Enma's knowledge of him went. He realized he had never even spoken to him one-on-one before.

"Do you know where you'll get off?" Gokudera asked, pulling his gaze away from the window.

Enma shook his head. "Maybe…" The incomplete thought vanished as quickly as it came.

Somehow in that moment, Enma noticed in a not-entirely-comparative but more intuitional way that Gokudera looked unwell. Maybe it was the lighting or the strange mood the boy seemed to be in. But the dingy aura about him reminded Enma of the time a couple years back when everybody in his family of seven, starting with Koyo and spreading from there, came down with a nasty case of influenza.

"Say, uh," he started, "Are you feeling all right?"

"Yeah," Gokudera said, his voice breaking on purpose. This did not leave Enma convinced. "I could ask you the same."

Enma hesitated. He looked back to his feet under the seat in front of them. The question had been burning in the back of his mind for so long now, but the creation of the words for it came out of nowhere, and they spilled out from the darkest cavity of his chest. "Do you ever feel like… like you've fallen into a hole, a metaphorical hole, and the more you try to get out, the deeper you sink?"

For a few seconds Gokudera faced him with an indiscernible expression, shocked or hurt or something, and Enma just stared at him sideways with a pang rising between his ribs.

"Because that's exactly how I've felt for – for I don't know how long," Enma said.

"Yes," Gokudera finally said.

The bus groaned to a stop at Thirty-first Street, just a few blocks from the north end of town. A few people filtered in and out.

"You do know?" There was a hopeful tone to his voice.

Gokudera bit his lip and glanced through the window at the people on the sidewalk just a few feet away. "Why don't we get off now?" he said. "We can walk. Would you mind?"

Enma nodded and stood tentatively.

0o.o0o.o0

As they headed east, Enma got to talk nearly uninterruptedly to Gokudera about many things he wanted to say. They first discussed depression, then their reasons for it, and subjects beyond that. How Enma's family was before his parents and sister were murdered, how Adelheid became his first and for a while only friend, how the Shimon grew one-by-one, how "Shitopi-chan"'s real name was Manami Arata and Kaoru wasn't always this quiet, how they all turned out to be orphans some way or another and understood each other, how he discovered and hence mastered his gravity manipulation abilities.

Gokudera didn't get to talk as much, but he seemed not to mind, and Enma still learned more about him within this time than he had learned the whole past year of knowing him. That he was diagnosed with type one bipolar disorder around the start of puberty and still suffered from it. That the ring Enma admired earlier had belonged to Gokudera's mother. That before he joined the Vongola he used to pickpocket and shoplift all the time and became so skilled that various organizations had hired him to steal things. And what intrigued Enma the most, the fact that he traveled to and lived in so many different places.

They spoke of Tsuna too. Not so much of what he meant to them, as they both already knew that about each other, but more of him as an individual. Enma found it difficult to grasp that a few days ago he really hated Gokudera. The two of them had quite a bit in common. Gokudera must have thought the same: he told Enma that he was now one of the very few people in the world – among the ranks of perhaps two or three others, not even able to include Tsuna – who knew all these things about him. And Enma hadn't said so but in this conversation he had revealed to Gokudera facts about himself that even some of the Shimon never heard.

Finally they reached the outskirts of town, where the buildings faded to lightly grassy cliffs on the horizon. This was where Enma made a decision. He decided he was sick of everything here. The tales of Gokudera's travels – from trekking across the Australian wilderness to chases through the tight alleys of São Paulo to the bright energy of New York City – had inspired him. Of course Gokudera didn't think Enma was _serious_, so he accepted the goodbye and agreed not to speak to anyone of this as though he would probably see the guy again within the week.

Enma did not know when he would be back. He guessed a year. Certainly a year was enough for him to find himself, right?

Either way, he headed home now, and would be gone by the time the rest of the Shimon got back from school.

**LXXXVII. Untied shoelaces are tricky things that catch you off guard and conspire to make you a fool. **

It honestly surprised Yamamoto that the new coach let him leave for a few minutes in the middle of an exercise. He went the long way to the restroom, wondering only passingly how his friends were holding up outside. More than anything he just wanted to stand in the air conditioning for a moment. PE was brutal this year, even for him. Through the blur of acute physical exhaustion he processed more of his Saturday plans, though it struck him rather painfully as he went down the hall that they may not have even happened.

He had not taken many steps into the restroom when he saw his best friend standing at a sink, and it caused him to freeze in place, watching him for about half a minute.

Gokudera slapped water onto his face and slowly brought his head up to examine himself. He grabbed the side of the sink as though he would fall otherwise, and with his bandaged hand pushed back a few strands of hair. The fluorescent lights bearing down on him made his skin appear rather sallow.

"Hey," Yamamoto said, only about half as loudly as he wanted.

Gokudera jumped in shock, pivoted to face him, exhaled and grabbed his chest. "_Jesus_," he muttered.

"Uh… skipping PE, I see."

"Yeah." Gokudera leaned against the sink, arching his back; from this angle, Yamamoto noted how very thin his friend had become around the waist.

"I'm sure the new coach wouldn't like that much," Yamamoto said. "I mean you weren't here yesterday or Monday. She'll come after you sooner or later."

Gokudera scoffed and shook his head.

The two of them became quiet for a moment, Yamamoto coming closer to his friend, Gokudera trying to pull his sleeves fully over his wrists in an inconspicuous way.

"Dera, I wanted to ask you…" he started.

"What?" Gokudera straightened and took a few steps toward Yamamoto.

"Remember my birthday, like, two or three weeks ago, when you said that instead of getting me a gift you would 'owe me one large favor that I could request at any time and for any task'?"

Gokudera paled drastically, his expression twisting into something strange. "Yes…?"

"I want your help with asking out Haru. Please." He attempted a chuckle, but somehow it didn't fit.

Gokudera slapped his knee. "I don't know what it is lately but so many people think I'm some sort of advice guru. I'm not," he said. First the Tenth, then Kozato, now Moto. What did he look like to them? It wasn't like he was the wisest guy out there.

"But I would feel a lot more comfortable doing it if you helped," Yamamoto pleaded. He perked up and pointed at him. "And you said you would do it!"

"Yeah, yeah, okay," Gokudera said.

"Awesome!" Yamamoto hit Gokudera's shoulder and grinned at him – which was admittedly difficult with him looking so sick like this. It came to Yamamoto's mind that he should ask his friend how he was coming along.

"I haven't cut since Friday," he said. His tone was flatter than Yamamoto expected, almost as if reporting to his friend was a burden of sorts, but Yamamoto was proud enough of him. "See for yourself." He peeled back both of his shirtsleeves and sure enough, there were no fresh wounds.

Yamamoto nodded. "Good. I should be getting back to PE. Otherwise the coach might go looking for me, and find you, too." He started for the door. "You can come over to my place after school and we can hatch a _genius plan_."

"Sure," Gokudera said. "Operation: Get-the-Two-Idiots-Together." He moved his hands as though imitating a spy from an action movie.

Standing in the doorway now, Yamamoto laughed. Gokudera made his way toward the back of the bathroom again, running his hand under each automatic faucet to turn it on for a second or two.

"Dera, another thing." Yamamoto lifted his hand and made large circles in the air in his best friend's direction, in a sort of inclusive motion. Gokudera faced him. "You know, you kind of shuffle your feet when you walk. Not sure if you noticed."

Gokudera looked down at his shoes. _I do? _He took a few deliberate steps forward and back, watching every little way his legs and feet moved him. _I don't think I do. Do I? _

"Moto?" He wasn't there.

**LXXXVIII. Roar. **

"I just – I'm so confused," she groaned. "It was so out of the blue."

Tsuna switched his phone to his other ear, holding it in place with a hunched shoulder. "Maybe you should sleep on it," he said. Using tiny strokes, he added the texture of fur to sketched Natsu's body. The real Natsu was asleep on his back and snoring on Tsuna's pillow.

"Yeah, maybe." Haru sighed into the receiver, making a brief whistling sound come through the speaker of Tsuna's phone.

Tsuna very lightly ran the eraser over a few patches of the graphite fur, as they were too dark. Then he set the pencil down. "It's not like the two of you have much to lose, though, Haru. And it's not going to be a big, serious date. You're going to the museum with him, and Hayato and me. The four of us would do something like that together even if we were only friends."

"Right…"

On the other hand, there was always the risk of a romance turning south, ending the friendship in all terms, forever. Tsuna didn't want to be a pessimist. So far, the friendship-turned-dating was working well for him and Hayato. The best he could do for his friends was hope everything turned out well for them too.

"I have to go," Haru said, her voice showing indecision. "Thanks for talking to me, Tsuna-san. You got me calmed down."

"Of course," he said. He waited for her to hang up and kept his cell phone in one hand. Then he held his open notebook up to his box animal. "Natsu, look, it's done." The lion stopped snoring for a few seconds. His eyes opened to slits, but he decided he would rather go back to sleep and see his likeness later. Tsuna took a picture of his new sketch and sent it in a text message to Hayato.

Reborn sauntered into Tsuna's bedroom with a glass of warm milk Nana had given him. He had been out of his sight since breakfast this morning.

"Hey, Reborn," Tsuna said. "I'm glad to see you."

His tiny tutor stopped in place. "Oh?"

"It's been a _crazy_ day," he answered. "There was a test and a pop quiz at school, and Enma's missing, and Adelheid yelled at me for a good half hour because I guess she thinks every little thing that happens to Enma is my fault, even though I have no idea what happened to him, and now Yamamoto's asked Haru to go on a double-date with Hayato and me this Saturday. Oh, and the Ninth and my dad sent us a crap-ton of paperwork – I don't even know where it came from!"

Reborn hopped onto his hammock in the corner of the room and swung it back and forth just slightly. "I'm sure you can handle it," he said.

The iPhone pinged. Hayato liked the picture. Tsuna hadn't expected any other response, but it made him smile nevertheless. He looked back to his tutor. "I think I need to relax a little before I go to sleep." He plugged his phone into its charger, pushed Natsu further to the side so he would have someplace to put his head, and laid flat on his back. His eyes closed.

"You've been doing that quite a bit lately, Tsuna," Reborn said. His concentration was instantly broken.

"Doing what?" He opened his eyes and sat up.

Reborn took a sip of milk. "That meditation with your Dying Will Flame. Does it feel good?"

Tsuna did not really know how to describe it. He simply said yes and shut his eyes again, and before he could hold his inner fire for long, he fell asleep.

0o.o0o.o0

He felt a panicked nudge at his shoulder and a voice calling him, "Tsuna, Tsuna…" He drew in a long breath that stung the inside of his throat.

Reborn and Natsu were on either side of him. Natsu leapt over his chest when he saw that his master's eyes had opened.

"Tsuna, the curtains are on fire," Reborn pointed to the window.

His student shot up, and the glow that breathed in his peripheral became a growing body of orange right before his eyes. "Oh, my God!" He jumped out of bed and started beating the fire, but little progress was made.

"I think it might be _your_ Flame," Reborn said. "Focus – try to put it out. If it's yours, if you started it, then you should be able to extinguish it."

Tsuna turned around to face him with a further sense of shock, "You mean _I _started this?!" Reborn furrowed his eyebrows at his student. Tsuna looked back to the curtains and made a slashing motion in the air a few times, staring as hard as he could at the blinding fire. It dimmed and disappeared.

He collapsed back onto his bed. The curtain over the window was charred, smoking. "What _was _that?" Tsuna breathed. Natsu rubbed against his hip.

Reborn regarded the damage, then climbed onto his hammock. "I think your telekinetic Dying Will ability needs some more work. Specifically on your control. You actually started a small fire in the kitchen this morning, but it was in the sink drain, so it went out quickly. You can't just go around accidentally causing fires. Now that that power has been unlocked in your brain, it's getting dangerous."

Tsuna merely gazed at his darkened, smoldering window, bewildered. He had to make sure to keep his thoughts under control. He had to practice more. Another thing to add to the problems list.

**LXXXIX. A mass awakening. **

About five minutes before class started, Gokudera slinked into the room and sat at his place near the front. He crossed his arms over the desk and buried his head in them.

Shitopi (Manami Arata, her real name was, he still thought it was funny) leaned forward to look him over a little. Yamamoto and Tsuna, at the other end of the room, had vaguely noticed Gokudera's entrance and made their way over to him after they ended their conversation.

"What have you got there?" she cooed. Without waiting for a response, she took a pale pink envelope from Gokudera's hand. It was sliced open with one of her fake nails and the letter inside removed and unfolded. She hadn't read much when her face contorted into some expression between disgust and pity. "Oh, man. I know this girl too. That's the sad part." She folded the letter back up, laid it on the corner of her desk, and grabbed a section of Gokudera's hair.

Yamamoto turned away from Tsuna and pointed to the letter. "Is that…?"

Gokudera looked up, Shitopi adjusting her position accordingly. "Another love confession letter," he said. "It's the third one I've gotten in the last two weeks." He straightened his back against the chair and sighed. "I quit."

She laughed. "You're silly, Gokudera-kun. You can't just _quit _being attractive. You'd have to get, like, mauled by a bear or something." A few seconds later, she gave a final tug on the back of his head. "I braided your hair," she said with a satisfied grin.

"I could feel that." He half-turned toward her.

"It's getting really long," she said, "Almost down to your shoulder-blades. Are you growing it out for any reason?"

"Not really," he said.

She hummed in consideration. "Well, I like it." He reached behind his head, quickly found the fishbone braid and tore through the center of it with his index finger, separating all the strands.

"You're no fun," Shitopi pouted. "And you're obnoxious," he replied.

Yamamoto elbowed Tsuna and smiled at him, to find that Tsuna had been staring at the love letter for the past few minutes. He dropped both of his hands to his knees. "You okay, Tsuna?"

Tsuna didn't say anything, just stared blankly in the direction of the letter, while Gokudera-kun and Shitopi-chan bantered on about Adelheid keeping the Shimon awake until the early morning hours in search of Enma for the second night in a row.

Eventually Yamamoto interrupted: "So, who is the girl? You going to reject her too?"

"Konami-something from class C – and yes, of course I am!" Gokudera said.

"I'm kinda friends with her," P. said. "If you want, Gokudera-kun, I can tell her for you."

"I think it would save a lot of trouble if you and I just came out publicly," Tsuna mumbled. The three of them looked at him.

Shitopi twisted herself slightly in her seat. "I thought you already did that," she said.

"But it was only to you guys, our friends," Tsuna explained. "I'm talking about telling everyone. That way – you know, Hayato wouldn't have so many random confessions to deal with anymore."

Hayato put his hand to his mouth and faced the door, abashed. Yamamoto and Shitopi thought on Tsuna's words a minute.

"Ah, if you're up to it, I guess," Yamamoto said with a shrug. "Not everybody might be as accepting. But it's not my decision. It does seem like a sensible thing to do."

Shitopi rose her eyebrows, moved her fingers in the air. "Do I detect a hint of envy?" she said.

Tsuna's lips pursed as if he were offended. "_No_," he said, though not too convincingly. "It's just. From a logical standpoi—"

The exact second the bell rang, the homeroom teacher walked in, a silent command for all the students to scatter back to their assigned seats.

Shortly after the morning announcements started, Tsuna felt his phone vibrate in his back pocket. He slid it out and onto his lap before reading the text from his boyfriend.

_Do you really think we should tell the whole class about us?_

He typed back with one finger:

_It would make sense to.._

Once the message sent, he immediately looked to Hayato a number of rows of desks away. He saw him take his Blackberry out of the side pouch of his backpack, tap out a reply over his lap, and put the cell phone back in its place. Tsuna's phone vibrated not five seconds later.

_I don't know if we're ready for that though. To be honest I like how it is now._

_But yu complain all th time about these girls they knew bout us they would leave u alone_

Tsuna peered up at the speaker in the ceiling; the assistant principal's voice still droned on. He wondered, if he concentrated enough, whether his Dying Will pyrokinesis would work on the room's PA system. Not that he would try in front of all these people. Especially with his lack of control.

_They probably still wouldn't. _

He squinted at his iPhone screen. Why was Hayato so hesitant about this?

Then he thought a bit on it. Pretty much every step of the way, Hayato had waited for Tsuna to make the first move. Tsuna was the one to tell him he loved him first, the one to hold his hand first, the one to kiss him first.

He had decided so before and would again: if they were going to evolve as a couple, Tsuna would have to do something.

Without replying, he pocketed his phone and situated himself more comfortably in his chair. He stole a glance at Hayato, who even at this early in the day had already given up on pretending to pay attention. (The homeroom teacher could not have cared less. Although some of the other teachers didn't like Gokudera-kun at all and fought to keep him on-task, in the end a futile effort. They seemed conflicted. In terms of discipline – and attitude – he was one of the worst students in third year, but his grades were perfect and the class average would go down noticeably without his scores.) Shitopi, sitting behind Hayato, caught Tsuna's eye, held it for a few seconds, and then smiled and winked at him. He shot a small smile back at her.

Students started talking again once the announcements ended. The teacher hadn't really settled in yet and was now leaving almost as quickly. "I have to go check the workroom," he declared. "Be good. I'll see you all in a few hours."

Tsuna's leg began bouncing up and down. He looked around at all the heads in the room, once, twice, debating with himself on the best way to say what he wanted to say, when to say it. Shyness and empowerment clashed inside him.

He did not even feel himself stand up. That alone captured the attention of a few students surrounding him.

"Um." His eyes rushed to his feet; he spoke louder, "_Um_." He unconsciously took a step backward.

Another girl – Ayako with a lip ring and collection of bright-colored socks – approached Hayato's desk to talk to him and Shitopi. Tsuna had seen her speak to Hayato a few times before. She always got this little spark in her eye when she looked him in the face.

"No," Tsuna whispered, starting forward. "No, no, no." He stood at his boyfriend's desk and flat-out interrupted the present discussion. "_Gokudera-kun_," he said, folding his hands behind his back, "Can I talk to you?" He cocked his head toward the corner by the door.

Shitopi smirked knowingly at him, and Ayako put a hand on her hip. Hayato glanced from side to side once before getting on his feet.

Tsuna clapped him on the upper back, led him to the front of the room. "Excuse me! Attention!" He projected his voice over all the others, turning the whole class to him. Hayato ducked his head and eyed the Tenth nervously.

"Ladies, Gokudera-kun is taken," he said. His hand dropped from Hayato's back and grabbed his left hand. "He's dating me." He held their joined hands out in front of them. "Tell your friends. Terribly sorry." Though he did not sound apologetic in the slightest.

A collective noise rose to the ceiling. For the most part the male students were silent, but many of the girls gasped or whined or oohed.

"Gokudera-kun, is it true?" one girl shouted as if it was the most tragic piece of news she had heard in her life.

"No way Gokudera-kun is dating that No-Good Tsuna," a boy scoffed.

Gokudera shrank backward a little and looked to the Tenth helplessly. Tsuna crossed his arms over his chest. He gave him an expectant smile.

"Ah, y-yeah," Gokudera said. "We are together."

**XC. Don't look at me like that. **

By the end of lunch that day, almost everyone in the school knew that the infamous Italian exchange student Hayato Gokudera and the nearly invisible Tsuna Sawada were in a relationship. The rumors had started too, already. One that they weren't really dating, just faking it; another that Tsuna had secretly been a transsexual girl all this time; and, the craziest, that they were getting _married_ because Gokudera needed to become a Japanese citizen in order to receive an certain organ transplant.

Neither of the boys cared for the gossip.

They were just looking forward to their date tomorrow.


End file.
